They crossed the hall, and passing through a green-baize covered door went down a passage that led to the kitchen.
“This is the housekeeper’s room,” said Hennessey, pointing to a half open door, “and the servants’ hall is that door beyond. This is the kitchen.”
They paused for a moment in the great old-fashioned kitchen, with an open range capable of roasting a small ox, one might have fancied. Norah, the cook, was busy in the scullery with her sleeves tucked up, and under the table was seated Susie Gallagher, a small and grubby hanger-on engaged in the task of washing potatoes. The potatoes were beside her on the floor and she was washing them in a tin basin of water with the help of an old nail-brush.
There was a horse-shoe hung up, for luck, on the wall over the range, and a pile of dinner plates, from last night’s dinner and still unwashed, stood on the dresser, where also stood a half-bottle of Guinness’ stout and a tumbler; an old setter bitch lay before the fire and a jackdaw in a wicker cage set up a yell at the sight of the visitors, that brought Norah out of the scullery to receive them, a broad smile on her face and her arms tucked up in her apron.
“He always yells like that at the sight of tramps or stray people about,” apologised the cook. “He’s better than a watch-dog. Hold your tongue, you baste; don’t you know your misthress when you see her?”
“Rafferty caught him in the park,” said Phyl, “and cut his tongue with a sixpence so as to make him able to speak.”
They left the kitchen and came into the yard. A big tin can of refuse was standing by the kitchen door, and on top of all sorts of rubbish, potato peelings, cabbage stalks and so forth, lay the carcass of a boiled fowl. It was the fowl they had dined off the night before and it lay there just as it had gone from the table, that is to say, minus both wings and the greater part of the breast, but with the legs intact.
Pinckney stared at this sinful sight. Then he pointed to it.
“What’s that doing there?” he asked.
“Waitin’ to be took away be the stable boy, sor,” replied the cook, who had followed them to the door. “All the rubbish is took away in that ould can every mornin’.”