"Indeed," wailed the voice, "'tis doin' me best I am. Amn't I wearin' them ould boots to plase you when me feet does be cut to bits wid them, an' the ould gazebo of a thing you've had me put on me head enough to break me heart? Sure I didn't know there was any harm at all at all in laughin' at the young gentlemen's jokes at dinner, an' they so arch I thought I'd have to run out of the room in screeches, so I did." "You're a bad, ungrateful little girl!" says Oona, stemming the flow of words, "or 'tis glad an' proud you'd be to have boots on them dirty feet of yours, and a cap to cover your head, that's more like a haystack than a Christian girl's. Why, when I was young, and in service in this very house, the housekeeper would have given me the quare goin' over if I let on any more than the poker that I heard anythin' was said when I was waitin' table. 'Twould be as much as my place was worth." "O, glory be to goodness, Mr. O'Connor, dear," cried the culprit, "sure we can't all be pokers, let alone that I can see them blessed childher just play-actin' at me to make me run out o' the room wid the laughin'." "Childher! Am I to understand you as referrin' to the young gentlemen of the house?" we hear Oona say in the loftiest tones; but at this moment a diversion occurs, for the twins come racing along the corridor with a letter for Aline, and Oona transfers her lecture and little Polly to the housekeeper's room. I always like to sit in Aline's room, there is such an atmosphere of quietness about her. Quietness and the sun are two things I associate with her. Is it always sunny in that little octagon room, or is it only an effect of the faded yellow silk panelling, and the old chairs and sofas in the same sunny colouring? One side of Aline's lantern-shaped room is indeed all window, and the upper panes filled with little golden shields, so that the room receives all the sunlight going. Except Aline's desk, which we have been told is genuine Sheraton, and worth a handful of money, the room has little furniture other than its straight-backed couches and chairs. I am sure there are secret cupboards behind some of those panels. Often, when Aline has been writing her long letters to Pierce or Freda, I have gone creeping round the room, touching every knob of the curious carved roses that surround the panels of yellow brocade. But I have never succeeded in making a panel slide back, as I have fondly hoped to do. Again and again I have desisted only when I discovered Aline's grave smile upon me. You will wonder what I expect to find,--well, no treasure, certainly, that is, no money treasure, but perhaps a bundle of faded love-letters, or some such relic of a former occupant of this room, which would be real treasure-trove for me. Aline laughs at me for a romantic child, and says I shall never find anything, but still I hope.