“It’s thru for me, Katy, that I never seed the like of this people afore. It’s a time I’ve been having since coming to this house, twelve months agone this week Thursday. Yer know, honey, that my fourth coosin, Ann Macarthy, recommended me to Mrs. Whaler, and told the lady that I knew about genteel housework and the likes; while at the same time I had niver seed inter an American lady’s kitchen.
“So she engaged me, and my heart was jist ready to burst wid grief for the story that Ann had told, for Mrs. Whaler was a swate-spoken lady, and never looked cross-like in her life; that I knew by her smooth, kind face. Well, jist the first thing she told me to do, after I dressed the children, was to dress the ducks for dinner. I stood looking at the lady for a couple of minutes, before I could make out any maneing at all to her words.
“Thin I went searching after clothes for the ducks; and such a time as I had, to be sure. High and low I went till at last my mistress axed me for what I was looking; and I told her the clothes for the ducks, to be sure. Och, how she scramed and laughed, till my face was as rid as the sun wid shame, and she showed me in her kind swate way what her maneing was. Thin she told me how to air the beds; and it was a day for me, indade, when I could go up chamber alone and clare up the rooms. One day Mrs. Whaler said to me:
“‘Biddy, an’ ye may give the baby an airin’, if yees will.’
“What should I do—and it’s thru what I am saying this blessed minute—but go upstairs wid the child, and shake it, and then howld it out of the winder. Such a scraming and kicking as the baby gave—but I hild on the harder. Everybody thin in the strate’ looked at me; at last misthress came up to see what for was so much noise.
“‘I am thrying to air the baby,’ I said, ‘but it kicks and scrames dridfully.’
“There was company down below; and whin Mrs. Whaler told them what I had been after doing, I thought they would scare the folks in the strate wid scraming.
“And then I was told I must do up Mr. Whaler’s sharts one day when my mistress was out shopping. She told me repeatedly to do them up nice, for master was going away, so I takes the sharts and did them all up in some paper that I was after bringing from the ould country wid me, and tied some nice pink ribbon around the bundle.
“‘Where are the sharts, Biddy?’ axed Mrs. Whaler, when she comed home.