Larry began to giggle, and was moved to try his wit.
"Nurse! What's the difference between a stale mate and an old inmate? And what does it want?"
"It wants the very same as yourself—brains!" returned Nurse, swiftly. "Now may be!" She wagged her head at him triumphantly, turning aside to hide the smile of victory, and Larry thought how lovely was her profile, as the firelight etched it in incandescent lines on the smoky background.
"Well, indeed, the Poor have a deal to put up with!" said Mrs. Mangan, lazily, leaning back in her basket-chair, with her big grey cat purring like an aeroplane engine on her knee. "The Doctor says no one but himself knows the way he's dragged all over the country, patching up after some of them young fellows that get dispensaries before they're fit to doctor the cat!"
The reformer, that underlay the artist in Larry, awoke.
"But, Mrs. Mangan," he said, hotly, sitting up in bed, and glaring into the gloom at Mrs. Mangan's half-seen face, "why do they give dispensaries to chaps that can't doctor a cat?"
"Because their fathers can spend four or five hundred pounds to buy votes!" returned Mrs. Mangan, laughing at him. "Is that news to you? Lie down child, and don't be looking at me like that! I haven't a vote to sell!"
Larry subsided with vague splutterings. Nurse came to his bedside and smoothed the clothes.
"Listen to me now," she said impressively, "and I'll tell you something to make you angry, if you like!"
She leaned against the foot of the bed, with her hands in the pockets of her apron, looking down at him. "I was in charge of th' infirmary at Mellifont one time, and late one evening a young farm-boy was brought in to me with a dislocated foot and a 'Pott's Fracture'——"