The unfortunate Charles restored to guardianship, now found himself with Miss Judith, lost; Miss Christian soaked to the skin, eight miles or more from her home; Master Larry ditto, in much pain, no nearer to his, and unable to mount his horse, which latter would have to be led over a succession of fences to the nearest road; (and no matter with what distinction an elderly coachman can drive a pair of horses on a road, it is very far from being the same thing to get a pair of horses across a country). It was, therefore, a very gloomy party that set face for the nearest highway. The intricacies of procedure at each jump need not here be dealt with, but it may be said that a more thankful man than Charles, when he again felt the good macadam under his feet, is not often met with. He would at that moment have said that he could not have felt an intenser gratitude than suffused him as he saw his convoy safe off the hills; but there he would have over-stated the case, since, scarcely five minutes after the road had been reached, an even more supreme thankfulness was his. Coming rapidly towards him, he beheld Dr. Mangan's outside car, and upon it was the large person of Dr. Mangan himself.
"Well," said Charles that evening, to Mr. Evans, "if it was the Angel Gabriel I seen flying down to me, I wouldn't be as glad as what I was when I seen the Big Doctor on the side-car!"
And Mr. Evans had caustically rejoined: "It'll be the funny day when you'll see wings on him!" meaning Dr. Mangan, of whom he had a low opinion.
Wings or no wings, no angel of mercy and succour was ever more welcome or more needed than was the Big Doctor at this moment. Larry, very white, shivering with pain and cold, was lifted on to the car; Christian was told to gallop away home as fast as she could, and Charles was directed to let Miss Coppinger know that her nephew would be put up for the night at the Doctor's own house at Cluhir.
"You can say to her that I met the Hunt, and one of them told me what happened," said the Big Doctor, "and I knew then what to do."
It might, indeed, habitually be said of Dr. Mangan that he knew very well what to do. There were, indeed, but two occasions on record when it might have seemed that he had not so known. The first of these was when he had abandoned an improving practice in Dublin to work as his father's partner in his native Cluhir, the second, when, preliminary to that return, he had married a lady, alleged, by inventive and disagreeable people, to have been his cook. The disagreeable people had also said disagreeable things as to the nature of the stress that had prompted the marriage. But it was now twenty years since the Mangans had been established at Number Six, The Mall, Cluhir; the Doctor had come in for his father's money as well as his practice, and was respected as "a warm man"; the disagreeable ones had grown old, and people who are both old and disagreeable cannot expect to command a large audience. Mrs. Mangan, on the contrary, was neither the one nor the other, being, at this time, but little over forty, and as kindly, lazy, and handsome a creature as ever lived down spiteful gossip by good-nature. When "The Dawkthor" (as she called him, with a drowsy drag on the first syllable) had galloped in at one o'clock to command Barty's room to be got ready at once, Mrs. Mangan was still in what she called "dishable," and was straying between her bedroom and the kitchen, pleasurably involved in the cares of both.
"They say young Coppinger fell in the river, and he's broken his wrist," said the Doctor rapidly, stamping into his wife's room, bringing the wind of the hills with him. "I'll bring him here as soon as I can get hold of him."
"The creature!" replied Mrs. Mangan, sympathetically.
"Well, don't be waiting to pity him now!" said her husband, stuffing bandages into his pocket, "but hurry and put hot jars into the bed—and clean sheets. Don't forget now, Annie!"
He lumbered in his long boots and spurs, down to the surgery, still issuing directions.