ance. "Come along,
Captain Garrett. I'll let you pat my pony, if you like!"

Mrs. Atkins looked depressed at Norah's information.

"Dear me! And dinner ordered for three!" she said sourly. "It makes
a difference. And of course I really had not reckoned on more than
you and Mr. Linton."

"I can telephone for anything you want," said Norah meekly.

"The fish will not be sufficient," said the housekeeper. "And other
things likewise. I must talk to the cook. It would be so much easier
if one knew earlier in the day. And rooms to get ready, of course?"

"The big pink room with the dressing-room," Norah said.

"Oh, I suppose the maids can find time. Those Irish maids have no
idea of regular ways: I found Bride helping to catch a fowl this
morning when she should have been polishing the floor. Now, I must
throw them out of routine again."

Norah suppressed a smile. She had been a spectator of the spirited
chase after the truant hen, ending with the appearance of Mrs. Atkins,
full of cold wrath; and she had heard Bride's comment afterwards. "Is
it her, with her ould routheen? Yerra, that one wouldn't put a hand
to a hin, and it eshcapin'!"

"Yes," said Mrs. Atkins. "Extraordinary ways. Very untrained, I must
say."

"But you find that they do their work, don't they?" Norah asked.

"Oh, after a fashion," said the housekeeper, with a sniff--unwilling
to admit that Bride and Katty got through more work in two hours than
Sarah in a morning, were never unwilling, and accepted any and every
job with the utmost cheerfulness. "Their ways aren't my ways. Very
well, Miss Linton. I'll speak to the cook."

Feeling somewhat battered, Norah escaped. In the hall she met Katty,
who jumped--and then broke into a smile of relief.

"I thought 'twas the Ould Thing hersilf," she explained. "She'd ate
the face off me if she found me here again--'tis only yesterday she
was explaining to me that a kitchenmaid has no business in the hall,
at all. But Bridie was tellin' me ye've the grandest ould head of an
Irish elk here, and I thought I'd risk her, to get a sight of it."

"It's over there," Norah said, pointing to a mighty pair of horns on
the wall behind the girl. Katty looked at it in silence.

"It's quare to think of the days when them great things walked the
plains of Ireland," she said at length. "Thank you, miss: it done me
good to see it."

"How are you getting on, Katty?" Norah asked.

"Yerra, the bes