Mount Music

"Christian, dost them see them?" sang an elder brother, small enough to be brutal, large enough to hurt, while he twisted Christian's arm as though it were indeed the rope that...

In the days when Christian Talbot-Lowry was a little girl, that is to say between the eighties and nineties of the nineteenth century, the class known as Landed Gentry was still...

There are certain persons who are born heralds and genealogists; there are many more to whom these useful gifts have been denied. With apologies to both classes, to the one for...

A fortnight or so after the moving incidents that have just been recited, Miss Frederica Coppinger, and her nephew, St. Lawrence of that ilk, were spending a long and agreeable...

There was one person who viewed the enthusiastic intimacy that had sprung up between the houses of Coppinger and Talbot-Lowry, with a disapproval as deep as it was prejudiced. I...

Are childhood and youth indeed Vanity? When Christian looks back upon her childhood at Mount Music, it seems to her that the World, and Life, and Time, could hardly have bettere...

It is not peculiar to Irish incomes to fail to develop in response to increasing demands upon them. It was, however, a distinctive feature of the incomes of those who were Irish...

It may be permissible to introduce a meet of hounds at or about the end of a chapter, but I feel sure that the ensuing run must be given elbow-room. Alarming to many though this...

The hunt swept on after the manner of hunts, full of sympathy, having, as to one man, contributed a silver cigarette case, with which another, a resourceful medical student, had...

The "touch of pneumonia," prophesied by Dr. Mangan, had proved to be a sufficiently emphatic one. Larry's recovery was slow, and during his languid convalescence, he found himse...

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 th...

It is, or should be, superfluous to say that Miss Frederica Coppinger viewed with disfavour, that was the more poignant for its helplessness, Larry's adoption and assimilation b...

People have said, retrospectively, that the rise of the Mangan family dated from the fall of Larry Coppinger into the Feorish River. This may, or may not have been the case but...

"He did, indeed, Mrs. Twomey!" replied Christian, rooting at her habit pocket, and extracting her purse. "He said that he'd won the scholarship, and he knew you were praying har...

The town of Cluhir had more features than those that have already been enumerated, to entitle it to respect. There was, primarily, the great river, that moved majestically in it...

Christian was in the kennels, in their innermost depths. She was, in fact, seated on the bench of "the ladies" lodging-house, on the dry and rustling cushion of bracken on which...

The origin of the Coppinger's Court picnic was complicated and has remained obscure. Whether its author had been Mrs. Mangan, or her friend, Mrs. Whelply, or young Mr. Coppinger...

Young Mr. Coppinger had been well inspired in his selection of a site for the entertainment. The trees along the river's bank had ceased for a space, leaving a level ring of gra...

At intervals in all histories there comes a pause, in which the moralities proper to the occasion are assembled, expounded and expanded. Such a moment might now seem to have arr...

Lady Isabel Talbot-Lowry had invited what is concisely spoken of as "people" to tea and tennis. The month was June, but the weather was March, or at best, a sullen and overcast...

At about this time, that imposing spectacle, once described by Mrs. Twomey as "The Big Doctor and little Danny Aherne walking the streets of Cluhir like two paycocks," was vouch...

There are families, as there are nations, that are like those ships that, launched under a lucky star, sail their appointed courses ever serenely and eventlessly, and though the...

The back stairs at Mount Music were old and precipitous. To descend them at high noon demanded circumspection at night, when the armies of the cockroaches were abroad; and marau...

There are illnesses that take possession of their victims slowly and quietly, with an imperceptible start, and a gradual crescendo of envelopment; others there are, that strike,...

The resolution to return to France, announced, as has been set forth, by Mr. St. Lawrence Coppinger, was not adhered to. In the first place, there was Barty Mangan and the vario...

The portrait of that civil and decent girl, Christian Talbot Lowry, was finished; it had been conveyed to Mount Music and was there established on an easel in the billiard-room...

Doctor Francis Mangan, driving his car at something even more than his usual high rate of speed, to the Parochial House, a mile or so from the town of Cluhir, what time the sun'...

Old, prosaic, and often tearful, though this earth may be, few are anxious to hasten their departure from it, and Daniel Prendergast, Esq., M.P., abetted by the ministrations of...

He drove a motor well; not brilliantly, like Larry, because Barty did nothing brilliantly, but capably and gently, with consideration for donkey-carts, with respect for horses,...

Larry bicycled up to the white chapel on the hill, to Second Mass, on the following morning. He rode fast through the converging groups of people, on foot, on outside cars, in c...

Major Talbot-Lowry had been in a passion for three days, and Lady Isabel, who had borne the storm alone, longed for Christian's return, as the lone keeper of a lighthouse might...

A housemaid ran down the long passage in front of her, flying to the summons. Through the open door of the dining-room Lady Isabel saw Christian giving the dogs their breakfast.

Little Mary Twomey, footing it into Cluhir on a misty Saturday morning, with a basket of fowl under her brown and buff shawl, was not sorry when, from a side road on the line of...

At a little before this time a sufficiently epoch-making scene had taken place between Dr. Mangan and his daughter, following not long on that day when the elephant had conveyed...

Great pain paralyses the mind, as the torture of a limb makes the limb faint and helpless. When the heart-pain can be dealt with as a separate thing, it is no longer supreme.

Doctor Mangan told himself that he had never laid out a ten-pound note to better advantage than the one he had pushed into the heel of Tishy's fist. It had, as he thought it wou...

Miss Letitia Mangan was a young woman of dauntless courage, who, as has been said of the sect spoken of by detractors as The Black Prozbytarians, feared neither God nor divil. T...

The small town of Cluhir, ever avid, as are all small towns, of sensation, was, did it only know it, about to enjoy a week that would long be remembered in its history. Miss Man...

The storm, and the preparations for the wedding, raged on with almost equal violence, within and without the walls of No. 6, The Mall. From the moment that daylight began on the...

It was Barty who had brought out the car, and, on his father's departure, he released the grip of the railings that had enabled him to keep his footing, and was, literally, blow...

In that same wind-wild dawn, Larry awoke, and tried to believe that he was a bridegroom, and was going to espouse Tishy Mangan in the course of the next few hours.

Dr. Mangan's body was still lying on the door on which it had been carried up from the river-bank. Kitchen chairs now supported it where it lay, with its burden, between the hig...