“Ask Mrs. Pole, please, to go to the children on the piazza. Then send ’Sias to look for Mr. Stuart, to tell him that there is a gentleman here waiting to see him, and give him this card,” said Palma, putting the slip of pasteboard into the girl’s hands.
“Is ’Sias for to gib dis to young marster?” inquired Hatty, dubiously.
“Yes, certainly. Go away now and do your errands. Go to Mrs. Pole first,” said the anxious young mother. And then she sat down near the front window, through which, from time to time, she could glance out and see that no harm should come to the babies until the arrival of her relief sentinel, Mrs. Pole.
Palma was not very well versed in the ways of the world, yet she felt it incumbent on her to entertain the stranger, but she did not exactly know how to do it.
“You are recently from Ireland. I have some very dear friends of that country. Indeed, my nearest kinsman married a young girl of that nation.”
“Yes; I am aware of that fact. Mr. Randolph Hay married Miss Judith Man—that brings me here to-day. But as for myself, I have not seen Ireland for twenty-one years,” said the stranger.
Palma looked up in surprise.
“I have been in California, Colorado, Australia, Tasmania, Cape Colony—everywhere else but in my native land,” continued the visitor.
Palma looked up inquiringly.
“And I came last from California,” concluded the stranger.