Mrs. Mangan laughed lightly, and said: "I wouldn't at all doubt it!" "Impossible!" exclaimed Larry. "Not a bit impossible!" said Nurse Brennan, "and how d'ye think they settled it in the end? They arranged one of them would begin th' operation and go on for five minutes, and then he should stop and give the anaesthetic, and the other would go on with the leg! Oh, it's the case, I assure you! It was twelve o'clock at night before they were done!" She paused, laughing a little at the hot questions with which Larry assailed her, but he could see the unshed tears gleaming in her eyes. "I was summoned to a private case next day; I don't know what happened to the unfortunate poor creature of a patient." "A stiff leg he has, I'll be bound!" said Mrs. Mangan. Larry lay silent. He saw it all. The long, dark ward, the white angel figure (he thought, romantically) bending over the tortured creature on the bed, and, far away, the pool of yellow light and in it those two--he sought in vain for adjectives to express what he thought of Dr. I'll-not-tell-you-his-name, and his young colleague. CHAPTER XI In the years that followed, "Larry's cads" came to be, for the young Talbot-Lowrys, a convenient designation for the friends into whose bosom Providence had seen fit to fling their cousin. But Larry never either approved or accepted it. He was entirely pleased with his new friends, and especially with that son of the house whose position he had usurped, Mr. Bartholomew Mangan. Barty was a lengthy, languid, gentle youth, of nearly nineteen, darkly, pallidly handsome, sweet natured, and slovenly, like his mother, and, unlike her, poetical, idealistic, unpractical, shy, and self-conscious. He was, at this period, working in the office of one of the two solicitors, who, with the aid of a branch of a bank, a Petty Sessions Court, and the imposing, plate-glass bow-windows of Hallinan's hotel, enabled Cluhir to convince itself of its status as a town. Further proof of the civic importance of Cluhir was found in the existence of a debating club of very advanced political views among its young men, of which Barty Mangan was secretary. Its membership, if small, was select, since its Republican principles did not compel it to admit to its privileges shop-assistants, or artisans, while they automatically excluded members of the class that were usually referred to in the club discussions as "Carrion Crows," or if the orator's mood was mild, "the garrison." In Ireland the attitude of mind that is termed, alternately, Disloyalty or Patriotism, is largely a matter of class, and Barty Mangan's introduction of Master St. Lawrence Coppinger, as an honorary member of the club, partook of the nature of a shock to those of the faithful who were present at his first appearance in the club room, a severely plain apartment, that offered no impediment in the matter of luxury to high thinking. But the faithful of the "Sons of Emmet" Club had nothing to fear from this