"I caught a good solid element that time," cried Lydia, laughing again. "She's embodied Loyalty," said the doctor. "It breathes from every pore." "She's going to smash my cut glass and china something awful," Lydia foretold. Dr. Melton took his godchild by the shoulders and shook her. "Now, Lydia Emery, you listen to me! I don't often issue an absolute command, if I am your physician, but I do now. You _let_ her smash your china and cut glass, and all the rest of your devastating trash she can lay her hands on, rather than lose her--until after September, anyhow! It's a direct reward of virtue for your having shipped the 'ould divil'!" Lydia's face clouded. "I'm afraid Paul won't think her much of a substitute for Ellen," she murmured, "and we'll have to find a cook somehow even if this one learns enough to be second girl." "Second girl!" ejaculated the doctor. "She's a human being with a capacity for loyalty." "She's evidently awfully incompetent--" The doctor snorted. "Competence--I loathe the word! It's used now to cover all imaginable sins, as folks used to excuse all manner of rascality in a good swordsman. We're beyond the frontier period now when competence was a matter of life and death. We ought to begin to have some glimmering realization that there are other--" "_Oh_, what a hand for talk!" said Lydia. The doctor rejoiced at her laughing impatience. He thought to himself, as he looked at her standing in the doorway and waving good-by to him, that she seemed a very different creature from the drooping and tearful--he interrupted his chain of thought as he boarded his car, to exclaim, "May she live long, that heavy-handed, vivifying Celt!" CHAPTER XXII THE VOICES IN THE WOOD Lydia had not been mistaken in her premonition of Paul's attitude toward the new maid. He found her quite unendurable, but the direful stories told by their Bellevue acquaintances about the literal impossibility of keeping servants during the hot season induced him to postpone his wrath against the awkward, irreverent, too familiar Irishwoman until after Lydia should feel more herself. Paul's wrath lost nothing by keeping. To Lydia, on the contrary, Anastasia's loyalty and devotion were inexpressibly comforting during the trying days of that summer. Her servant's loving heart radiated warmth and cheer throughout all her life. One day, when her mother protested against 'Stashie's habit of familiar conversation with the family (they had all soon adopted the Irish diminutive of her name), Lydia said: "I can not be too thankful for 'Stashie's love and kindness." Mrs. Emery was outraged. "Good gracious, Lydia! What things you do say." "Why not? Because she hasn't been to college? Neither have I. She's as well educated as I am, and a great deal better woman." "Why, what are you talking about? She can't read!" "I don't," said Lydia. "That's worse."