think we're all the worst in the world! And the Major! The Major'll go
cracked-mad!"

"It doesn't matter where he goes!" says Larry, defiantly, "I've had
these 'notions,' as you call them, for ages and ages!"

"Ah, God help you, child!" Mrs. Mangan would probably say, "keep quiet
now, till I get you a glass of hot milk!"

Politics did not form the only point of contact that had been
established between Larry and the Mangan household. Since his
promotion to comparative convalescence, Tishy, daughter of the house,
had entered more actively into his scheme of life, and the point of
entrance was music. Some divergence in view as to music is more easily
condoned, on both sides, than in the other realms of the spirit. It
matters not from how far countries the travellers may come, or how
widely sundered may be their ideals, there are rest-houses at which
they can draw rein and find agreement. One of these, possibly the
greatest of them, is folk song. Ireland, whose head is ever turned
over her shoulder, looking to the past, has, in her folk song, at
least, reason and justification for her preoccupation with what has
been in her music, rather than with what is, or is to come. It is
difficult to reconcile the eternal beauty of traditional Irish melody
with the lack of musical interest and feeling that distinguishes the
mass of modern Irish life. But, here and there, a string of the harp
that has hung, mute, on Tara's walls for so many centuries, utters a
sigh of sweet sound, and at Number 6, The Mall, Cluhir, the soul of
music had still some power of inspiration.

This is, perhaps, a rather elaborate method of intimating that Dr.