th a pitchfork, jest
like the nager man."

"Don't talk to me like that!" exclaimed La Fleur. "Mr. Haverley is a
gentleman. I have lived enough among gentlemen to know them when I see
them, and they can work and they can play and they can do what they
please, and they are gentlemen still. Don't you ever speak that way,
again, of your master."

"I thought I had heard, mum," said Molly, "that you looked down on
tradespeople and the loike."

"Tradespeople!" said the other, scornfully. "A gentleman farmer is very
different from a person in trade; but I can't expect anything better from
a woman who boils coffee, and never heard of bouillon. But remember the
things I have told you, and thank your stars that a cook as high up in
the profession as I am is willing to tell you anything. Are you the only
servant in this house?"

"There's a man by the name of Mike," said Molly, "a nager, though you
wouldn't think it from his name. He helps me sometimes, an' he helps
iverybody else other times."

"Is that the man?" said La Fleur, looking out of the window.

"That's him, mum," said Molly; "he's jest goin' to the woodpile
with his axe."

"I wish to speak to him," said La Fleur, and with a very slight nod of
the head she left the kitchen by the door that led into the grounds.

Looking after her, Molly exclaimed,--

"Drat you, for a stuck-up, cross-grained, meddlin', bumble-bee-backed
old hag of a soup-slopper; to come stickin' yer big nose into other
people's kitchens! If there was a rale misthress to the house instead
of the little gal upstairs, you'd be rowled down the front steps afore
you'd been let come into my kitchen." And with this she returned to
her potatoes.

La Fleur stopped at the woodpile, as if in passing she had happened to
notice a good man splitting logs. In her blandest voice she accosted Mike
and bade him good-day.

"I think you must be Michael," she said. "The cook has been speaking of
you to me. My name is La Fleur."

Mike, who had struck his axe into a log, touched his flattened hat.

"Yes, mum," he said; "Mr. Griffing has been tellin' me that. Are you
lookin' for any of the folks?"

"Oh no, no," said La Fleur; "I am just walking about to see a little of
this beautiful place. You don't mind that, do you, Michael? You keep
everything in such nice order. I haven't seen your garden, but I know it
is a fine one, because I saw some of the vegetables that came out of it."

Mike grinned. "I reckon it