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After that they had to wash their hands, all sticky with dough, and after that 'Stashie took Ariadne on her lap and told her Irish fairy stories, all about Cap O'Rushes and the Leprechaun, till they were startled by the boiling over of the milk 'Stashie had put on the stove to start a pudding. 'Stashie certainly did have bad luck with her cooking, as she herself frequently sadly admitted.
Lydia was grateful to him for this. She could not have borne his tenderness then, but his professional concentration left her horribly alone. No, not alone! There was always 'Stashie silent 'Stashie, with red eyes, her heart bleeding. But even 'Stashie's loyal heart could not know all the bitterness of Lydia's. 'Stashie's breasts did not swell and throb, as if in mockery.
"Three minutes by that," she said. "May I leave to tell 'Stashie?" The doctor nodded absently. Neither spoke of Paul. Lydia hurried across the dark, silent house with swift sureness. The happiness she was about to confer cast a radiance upon her. She touched the door to the servant's room, and ran her fingers lightly over it to find the knob.
Ariadne informed her companions, looking up from her egg with a yolky smile, "Daddy told Muvver the other day that 'Stashie had certainly learned to boil eggs something fine! And he laughed, but Muvver didn't. Was it a joke?" "They are very good eggs indeed, and well boiled," the new man answered. She loved the way in which he conversed with her.
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.
Besides, you had 'Stashie to wait on you." "Yes; I had 'Stashie," admitted Lydia. Paul perceived uneasily some enigmatic quality in her quiet answer, and went on reasonably: "Now, Lydia, don't go making yourself out a martyr because I didn't come back. You know I'd have come if there was anything to be done! I'd have come from the ends of the earth to help you nurse her if we'd had to do that!
At the turn of her phrase she turned cold, and added with a quick vehemence: "No, no! before that! Long before that!" She went on, to cover her agitation and get the maid out of the room, "'Stashie, get the baby a glass of milk."
"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."
Never in her life had she tried so hard to be good, but nobody paid the least attention to her nobody but the new man and 'Stashie, and they weren't the angry ones. The others stood about in groups in corners, talking in voices that started in to be low and always got loud before they stopped. Ariadne added several new words to her vocabulary at this time, from hearing them so constantly repeated.
I couldn't have kept Madeleine off much longer God! if Madeleine had gone into that room, I Lydia but nobody told 'Stashie to go! It must have been an inspiration. I thought of course my messenger I was expecting you every instant. She's been crouching out here in the hall all night, not venturing even to ask a question, until I caught sight of her eyes she loves Lydia too!
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