She would have gone to the stake for the Verbal
Inspiration of the Bible; she was as convinced that the task of
Creation was completed in a week, as she was that she paid the
Coppinger's Court workmen for six days' work every Saturday evening.
In short, the good Frederica was a survival of an earlier and more
earnest period, and her religious beliefs were only comparable, in
their sincerity and simplicity, with those of the Roman Catholic poor
people, whose spiritual prospects were to her no less black
(theoretically) than were hers to them.
Those who know Ireland will have no difficulty in believing that Miss
Coppinger had no warmer sympathisers in her feelings concerning Larry
and the Mangan household than the Coppinger's Court retainers, despite
the fact that none of them were of her communion, nor did they share
her political views. And no less will those who know Ireland,
recognise that in the Irish countryside it is the extremes that touch,
and that there is a sympathy and understanding between the uppermost
and the lowest strata of Irish social life, which is not extended, by
either side, to the intervening one. Thus, it was that Frederica
could, and did converse with her work-people and her peasant
neighbours, with a freedom and an implicit confidence in their good
breeding, that it is to be feared she was incapable of extending to
Larry's new acquaintances in Cluhir.
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