s easy, that, compared wid cleaning up the whole house that seemed
like to tumble!" said Moya with a sigh of relief.

The children were already asleep and the remainder of the night was
unbroken by any sound save the dripping of the raindrops from the
branches and the swish of wet leaves against each other when a light
breeze revived their former activities.

Little Vladimir was up early with a memory of something queer having
happened in the night. He was eager to go downstairs and find out what
it was all about and his mother dressed him and let him out of her room
and then turned over to take another nap. When Moya went down to set
the oil stove in position for use he was amusing himself contentedly
with the rubbish in the fireplace, his face and hands already in need
of renewed attention from his mother.

"'Tis the sooty-faced young one ye are," she called to him
good-naturedly. "Run up to the brook and wash yerself an' save yer
mother the throuble."

She opened the back door and he ran out into the yard, but instead of
going up the lane to the brook he scampered round the house and down
the lane. Moya called after him but he paid no attention. "Sure, I've
too much to do to be day-nursing that young Russian," she murmured.

There were wonderings and ejaculations in many tongues when all the
women and children came down and examined the cracks in the kitchen
side of the chimney and in the back of the dining-room fireplace and
saw the heap of rubbish and bricks piled up in the fireplace. It gave
them something to talk about all the morning. This was lucky, for the
grass was too wet for the children to play on it, and when mothers and
children were crowded on the veranda idle words sometimes changed to
cross ones.

"Tis strange; they's good women, iv'ry wan, take 'em alone," Moya had
said one day to Mrs. Schuler and Ethel Blue when they heard from the
kitchen the sounds of dispute upon the porch; "yit listen to 'em whin
they gits together."

"That's because each one of them gets out of the talk just what she
puts into it," explained the Matron.

"Manin' that if she comes to it cross it's cross answers she gits.
It's right ye are, ma'am. 'Tis so about likin' or hatin' yer work.
Days when yer bring happiness to yer work it goes like a bird, an' days
when ye have the black dog on yer back the work turns round an' fights
wid yer."

Ethel Blue listened intently. Things like that had happened to her but