sick room were relaxing, these two provided him with interest and
entertainment of which they were delightfully unaware.

"Well, and what will I give him for his dinner to-day,
Norrse?"--(impossible to persuade the English alphabet to disclose
Mrs. Mangan's pronunciation of this word)--his hostess would say,
drifting largely into Larry's room, and seating herself on the side of
his bed.

"Don't be making an invalid of him at all, Mrs. Mangan!" Nurse Brennan
would rejoin briskly; "I'm just telling him I'd be sorry to get a
thump from that old wrist of his, he and the Doctor think so much
about! And he hasn't as much as a point of temperature those three
days!"

"Oh, I say, Nurse!" Larry would protest, "then why won't you let me
get up?"

"Be quite now"--(in Ireland the "e" in "quiet" is not infrequently
thus transposed)--"and don't be bothering me, like a good child!"
Nurse would reply, with a sidelong flash of her charming eyes, a
recognition of Larry's age and sex that atoned for the opprobrious
epithet.

"Would he like a bit of fish now? I'm going down the town, and I might
meet one of the women in from Broadhaven." Thus Mrs. Mangan,
coaxingly.

"Oh, Mrs. Mangan, please don't bother!" says Larry.