"Ah, here he is now!" said Mrs. Mangan, as the Doctor came, enormously, into the small dining-room. "For shame for you, Francis, to be so late." "Ah, don't scold him, Mrs. Mangan!" said the priest simpering conventionally. "Wasn't it ministering to the afflicted that delayed him! Doctors mustn't be subjected to the rules that bind ordinary people!" "That's right, Father," said the Doctor, beginning to carve a large, cold goose, with the skill that his trade bestows; "stand up for me now! Don't let her bully me--though indeed I might be used to it by this time!" "Doesn't he look like it, the poor fella!" scoffed Mrs. Mangan, directing a melting look at her husband; "starved and pairsecuted! That's what he is!" Father Greer smiled permissively over the rim of his glass of whisky and water; it was strong and good, and the food was good also, and abundant. Mrs. Mangan's suppers were as generous as her own contours, and were noted for their excellence. She herself was not so much to the priest's taste. He was celibate by nature as well as by profession. Women were antagonistic to him, and Mrs. Mangan, godly matron though she was, seemed to him to symbolize a very different ordering of life to that which he approved; but the Big Doctor was an asset of the Church who must be simpered upon, and for whose sake a little social boredom must be unrepiningly endured. He was an older man, by a good many years, than the Doctor, and was nearer sixty than fifty, but his figure was slight and active, and his scant hair was dark and silky, though there was a light dust of grey in it over the ears, which were thin and outstanding, and shared with his nostrils and eyelids the tinge of red that was denied to the rest of his face. He had the wide, brains-carrying forehead of a fox, as well as a fox's narrow jaw, but his eyes were small and black, and as quick as a bird's. Barty and Tishy, who were not agreed in many things, were agreed in being afraid of him. They sat in perfect silence, while their mother occupied herself with directions to Hannah, who hovered, indeterminately, near the door, and their father discoursed the visitor. Father Greer was something of a traveller, and he was now giving an instructive account of a recent visit to Switzerland, and of the "winter sports" that had occupied the energies of all in the hotel save himself. "I found the air as bracing and as serviceable to me as you had led me to expect," he said to his host, "but the sports seemed to me to make a toil of pleasure, and the dancing that went on every night--'twas impossible to sleep! Well! Youthful frivolity, I suppose, must be condoned, but I may say I was greatly annoyed at an incident that occurred at a neighbouring hotel. Mostly English, the visitors were, and they held a Protestant service on Sunday in the saller-mongy." Barty looked secretly at his sister. His expression said: "And why shouldn't they?"