sun, and Sanford abandoned the rattles
to behold a monstrous female, unknown, white-skinned, moving on majestic
feet to his seclusion. He sat deeper in the tub, but she seemed
unabashed, and stood with a red hand on each hip, a grin rippling the
length of her mouth.

"Herself says you'll be comin' to herself now, if it's you that's Master
San," she said.

Sanford speculated. He knew that all things have an office in this
world, and tried to locate this preposterous, lofty creature while she
beamed upon him.

"I'm San. Are you the new cook?" he asked.

"I am the same," she admitted.

"Are you a _good_ cook?" he continued. "Aggie wasn't. She drank."

"God be above us all! And whatever did herself do with a cook that drank
in this place?"

"I don't know. Aggie got married. Cooks _do_," said Sanford, much
entertained by this person. Her deep voice was soft, emerging from the
largest, reddest mouth he had ever seen. The size of her feet made him
dubious as to her humanity. "Anyhow," he went on, "tell mother I'm not
clean yet. What's your name?"

"Onnie," said the new cook. "An' would this be the garden?"

"Silly, what did you think?"

"I'm a stranger in this place, Master San, an' I know not which is why
nor forever after."

Sanford's brain refused this statement entirely, and he blinked.

"I guess you're Irish," he meditated.

"I am. Do you be gettin' out of your tub now, an' Onnie'll dry you," she
offered.

"I can't," he said firmly; "you're a lady."

"A lady? Blessed Mary save us from sin! A lady? Myself? I'm no such
thing in this world at all; I'm just Onnie Killelia."

She appeared quite horrified, and Sanford was astonished. She seemed to
be a woman, for all her height and the extent of her hands.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"As I am a Christian woman," said Onnie. "I never was a lady, nor could
I ever be such a thing."

"Well," said Sanford, "I don't know, but I suppose you can dry me."

He climbed out of his tub, and this novel being paid kind attention to
his directions. He began to like her, especially as her hair was of a
singular, silky blackness, suggesting dark mulberries, delightful to the
touch. He allowed her to kiss him and to carry him, clothed, back to the
house on her shoulders, which were as hard as a cedar trunk, but covered
with green cloth sprinkled with purple dots.

"And herself's in the libr'y drinkin' tea," said his vehicle, depositing
him on the veranda. "An' what mi