d stood off and thrown
them at a bull's-eye in the middle of the table." Moreover, she herself
could not emancipate herself from the ideas of toilet gleaned in the
little one-room cabin in County Clare. She was passionately devoted to
Lydia, and took with the humblest gratitude any hints about the care of
her person, but it was like trying to make a color-blind person into a
painter! Anastasia could only love on her knees, and serve, and
sympathize and cherish; she could not remember to comb her hair, or to
put on a clean apron when she opened the door, even if it were Madame
Hollister herself who rang. She had once opened to that important
personage attired in a calico wrapper, a sweater, and a pair of rubber
boots, having just come in from emptying the ashes--one of the heavy
tasks, outside her regular work, which she took upon her strong, willing
self. "But I was clane, and I got her into the house in two minutes from
the time she rang, the poor old soul!" she protested to Lydia, who, at
Paul's instance, had taken her to task.

Lydia explained, "But Mr. Hollister's aunt is a person who would rather
wait half an hour in the cold than see you without an apron."

To which 'Stashie exclaimed, in awestruck wonder before the mysteries of
creation, "Folks do be the beatin'est, don't they now, Mis' Hollister!"

"And you must not speak of Mr. Hollister's aunt as a 'poor old soul,'"
explained Lydia, apprehensive of Paul's wrath if he ever chanced to hear
such a characterization.

"But she is that," protested 'Stashie. "Anybody that's her age and
hobbles around so crippled up with the rheumatism--my heart bleeds for
'em."

"She is very rich--" began Lydia, but after a moment's hesitation she
had not continued her lesson in social value. She often found that
'Stashie's questions brought her to a standstill.

There was something lacking in the Irishwoman's mental outfit, namely,
the capacity even to conceive that ideal of impersonal self-effacement,
which, as Paul said truthfully, is the everywhere accepted standard for
servants. Her loquacity was a never-ending joke to Madeleine Lowder and
her husband, who were exulting in a couple of deft, silent, expensive
Japanese "boys" and who, since Madeleine frankly expressed her horror at
the bother of having children, seemed likely to continue ignorant,
except at comfortable second-hand, of harassing domestic difficulties.

If Lydia had not been in such dire need of another pair