"It isn't quite the same thing, Bridget, you know. Oh! thank you, that _is_ clever. How are you getting on downstairs?" "Pretty well, Miss Mary, but 'tis aisy does it wid that woman, Mrs. Murphy. She's a great ould gossip of a woman; 'tis no wonder Tim an' the childher are the shows of the place. I was hard put to it to shut her mouth--her tongue's longer thin my arm--an' get her to the master's studio before he came home." "Oh, poor papa! You're surely not invading him, Bridget?" "Aye, am I. The woman's up to her shoulders in dirty soap-suds by this time, unless she's found someone more ready to listen to her thin I was. There, Miss Mary, there's the curtain; I've made a nate job of it, haven't I?" "You have indeed, Bridget. I wish you'd teach me some of your cleverness." "Arrah! what would you want with the like? Sure, 'tis only by rayson of a little inconvaynience that rale blood-ladies like yourselves has to lift your hands, if it was only to wash your faces." Mary Graydon shook her head. Hers was a face which seemed irradiated with a quiet inward light, and her eyes were gentler than the eyes of doves. "You must teach me all you know, Bridget, for I shall always be poor." "You mane when you marry Mr. St. Leger, Miss Mary?" The girl nodded without speaking, but a sudden rush of happy colour covered her innocent face. "Don't be thinkin' of that, my lamb. The ould lord'll come round before that. Sure he couldn't be as hard-hearted a naygur as he lets on." "I'm afraid not, Bridget. He has a little son of his own now, you see, and so the less reason for forgiving papa." Bridget lifted her eyes and hands. "Him wid a little son indeed! Cock him up wid a little son, an' him wid wan foot in the grave! Well, there's no gettin' over the ways of some people. But 'tis time for me to be gettin' about my work, or I'll be as bad as that Murphy woman. Just you call to me, Miss Mary, if you want to know anything; but don't go spoiling them eyes on Mr. Mick, puttin' too fine work into that baronite's curtains." She went off then, and for a time there was silence in the room, broken only by the occasional efforts of Pamela's Irish terrier, Pat, to better Bridget's bed-making. The windows, brown-paper panes and all, were flung wide open, and there was a lovely prospect of plain and hill, and wood and river, stretching away into the pearl-grey distances. A little wind sang like a lullaby in the leaves of the sycamore outside the window, and from the garden below came a drowsy humming of bees.