"An' what might that be in thrimbles like that?" asked the Irishwoman, with curiosity.
"Pâté de foie gras en aspic," the cook responded, curtly, sending up the dish and then returning silently to the kitchen.
"Patti's photograph?" repeated the laundress. "Do ye mind the impidence of her, tellin' me a lie like that?"
The English valet looked at the French maid and laughed. Then he explained, patronizingly:
"Patty de four grass, as we call it in French—not Patti's photograph. It's a delicacy, and it's made of goose livers."
"Then why couldn't that Dutch cook have said so?" the laundress asked, indignantly. "I've as good a right to know about a goose as ever she has. I misdoubt she was that poor where she came from they had never the grass of a goose to their cabin."
"Did you see 'is lordship?" asked the valet.
"I did that," the Irish girl replied, "an' what did I tell you about him? His head has grown through his hair! There's been good and bad harvests since he was young, I'm thinkin'—and it's mighty quare he looks about his eyes, too. It'll be a poor day for Miss Ethel when she marries a bald-headed ould runt like that, for all he's a lord!"
"Oh, I say, Miss Maggie; you must not speak so disrespectful of his lordship," Parsons insisted; "really, now, you mustn't."
"It's that Mrs. Playfair 'ud be the match for him, I'm thinkin'," said Maggie. "It's a bold-faced creature she is, an' no more clothes on her than ain't decent anyway. And then, how she looked at Mr. Van Allen and then at the bishop; and how she talked—I'd no patience with her. Do ye mind what it was I heard her say now?"