"Well, Francis," said Mrs. Mangan, admiringly, "I never knew you that you'd be without an answer, no matter what anyone'd say to you! 'Many mansions,' says you! I declare I'd never have thought of that! Father, wouldn't you say he answered him well!" Father Greer, having made his point, smiled indulgently, and, as he was deeply involved in a mouthful of tough goose, the smile, blended with the act of mastication, made him look more than ever like a fox, a fox in a trap, gnashing at his captors. "I always knew the Doctor could be trusted to 'give a knave an answer,' as Shakespeare says," he said, when the power of speech was restored to him; "I'm often surprised at the liberty, I might almost say the licence, that is met with in Protestants in connection with their religion. Take the case of young Mr. Coppinger that I was speaking of. That was a melancholy instance of evil communications corrupting good manners. I may say that I regard with anxiety a too great freedom, what I may call an unrestrained intercourse, between members of the two churches--that is, indeed, if I am justified in describing as a church that which I have heard stigmatised as 'a fortuitous concourse of atheistic atoms'!" Father Greer's nose came down over his upper lip, the corners of his mouth went up, and a succession of sniffs indicated that he was laughing. "That may be rather severe," he conceded, "but I may say that, for my part, I consider that Catholics have a sufficiency of pleasing society within their own communion, without striving to go beyond it!" Father Greer paused, looked round the table as if to receive the general assent, and put his sharp nose into the tumbler of brown whisky and water, to whose replenishing the Doctor had not failed to attend. A rather stricken silence followed. Mrs. Mangan's large and handsome brown eyes turned guiltily to her husband, and moved on from his face to one of the many trophies of the Mount Music Sale, a Protestant chair back, now flaunting itself on a Catholic chair, under the very eyes of the Parish Priest! Barty glowered at his plate; Tishy, who had not enjoyed herself at the Sale, felt, in consequence, that she was now justified in doing so at the expense of her family, and held up her head, and looked at her father. It was plain to see that the elephant had felt the prick of the Mahout's _ankus_. The Big Doctor's face was perturbed. Tishy saw him look at the little priest's glass, and knew that he wished it were empty, in order that he might pour into it a propitiatory oblation. He cleared his throat once or twice before he spoke.