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"You left part of your letter to Patsy O'Hern," said Lydia, and sat down suddenly, as though her strength were spent. The woman opposite her flushed a purplish red. There was a long silence. Lydia looked at her servant with a face before which Ellen finally lowered her eyes. "I am sure, Mrs.
"I'm Anastasia O'Hern, ma'am," she announced with a thick accent of County Clare and a self-confident, good-humored smile, "though mostly I'm called 'Stashie and I'm just over from th' old country to my Aunt Bridgie that washed for you till the rheumatism got her, and when she told me about what you'd done for her and Patsy how you'd sent off that ould divil where she couldn't torment Patsy no more, and him as glad of it as Aunt Bridgie herself, just like she knew he would be, and what an awful time you do be havin' with gurrls, and a baby comin', I says to myself and to Aunt Bridgie, 'There's the lady I'm goin' to worrk for if she'll lave me do ut, and Aunt Bridgie was readin' to me in the paper about your gran' dinner party last night and I says to her and to myself, 'There'll be a main lot of dishes to be washed th' day and I'd better step over and begin."
Peggy rose rubbing an elbow, and said with the air of a queen to her retinue, "Coom away now poor crathurs, so we'll drink long life to him." And Marget Dunn and Biddy O'Hern and no-legged Tom Whinn with his truckle cart disappeared into an alley. "What's all this whillalu?" asked a sober-looking, clerical gentleman who came riding by.
Anastasia O'Hern was there, to be sure heavy-handed, warm-hearted 'Stashie, who took the new little girl to her loyal spinster heart and wept tears of joy over her safe arrival; but 'Stashie had proved, as Paul predicted from the first time he saw her, incorrigibly rattle-headed and loose-ended.
And then, a day or so before, old Mrs. O'Hern, her washwoman, had come directly to her with that revolting revelation of Ellen's influence on her grandson, little Patsy. At the recollection of the old woman's face of embittered anguish, Lydia shuddered. Oh, if she could only tell Paul!
Peg's companions, old Marget Dunn and Biddy O'Hern and no-legged Tom Whinn, the fragment of a once active sailor who propelled himself by a low truckle cart and two short sticks; these interesting members of society heard the shrill note of their leader's eloquence and suddenly appeared like beetles out of unsuspected crevices near by.
Probably Ellen won't let Mrs. O'Hern take her usual weekly perquisite of sugar and tea. Servants are always quarreling and the only way to do is to keep out of their lies about each other and let them fight it out themselves.
The released men were Dewey Ashmore, E. Belmat, C. Burke, L. E. Butcher, James Callahan, Harry Chase, Charles Day, A. J. Deach, Charles Ellis, J. Ford, Owen Genty, Hy Gluckstad, Frank Goff, James C. Hadley, Steve Heletour, A. O. Hooper, C. C. Hulbert, H. P. Hunsberger, C. L. Johnson, R. W. Jones, Joe Kelley, F. Lansing, W. O. Lily, E. McBride, William McGregor, R. Nicholson, David O'Hern, Harry Parker, J. Ryan, Sam Scott, Mark Skomo, Thomas Smye, and F. Thorpe.
Ariadne prattled to her mother of her adventures in the kitchen, where Patsy O'Hern, 'Stashie's cousin Patsy, was visiting her, and he made Ariadne a "horse out of a potato and toothpicks for legs, and a little wagon out of a matchbox, and a paper doll to sit and drive, and Patsy was perfectly loverly, anyhow, and he was making such a lot of money every day, and, oh, he made the wheels out of potato, too, as round as could be he cut it, and he gave every cent of it to his grandmother and she loved him as much as she did 'Stashie, and wasn't it good to have 'Stashie back, and "
She tried to revert to the question once or twice later, but now Paul alternated between shaming her laughingly for her gullibility and making fun of her "countrified" interest in the affairs of her servants. "But, Paul, Mrs. O'Hern says that Patsy doesn't want to drink and and go to those awful houses his father died of it only Ellen makes him, by "
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