“The fish will not be sufficient,” said the housekeeper. “And other things likewise. I must talk to the cook. It would be so much easier if one knew earlier in the day. And rooms to get ready, of course?”
“The big pink room with the dressing-room,” Norah said.
“Oh, I suppose the maids can find time. Those Irish maids have no idea of regular ways: I found Bride helping to catch a fowl this morning when she should have been polishing the floor. Now, I must throw them out of routine again.”
Norah suppressed a smile. She had been a spectator of the spirited chase after the truant hen, ending with the appearance of Mrs. Atkins, full of cold wrath; and she had heard Bride’s comment afterwards. “Is it her, with her ould routheen? Yerra, that one wouldn’t put a hand to a hin, and it eshcapin’!”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Atkins. “Extraordinary ways. Very untrained, I must say.”
“But you find that they do their work, don’t they?” Norah asked.
“Oh, after a fashion,” said the housekeeper, with a sniff—unwilling to admit that Bride and Katty got through more work in two hours than Sarah in a morning, were never unwilling, and accepted any and every job with the utmost cheerfulness. “Their ways aren’t my ways. Very well, Miss Linton. I’ll speak to the cook.”
Feeling somewhat battered, Norah escaped. In the hall she met Katty, who jumped—and then broke into a smile of relief.
“I thought ’twas the Ould Thing hersilf,” she explained. “She’d ate the face off me if she found me here again—’tis only yesterday she was explaining to me that a kitchenmaid has no business in the hall, at all. But Bridie was tellin’ me ye’ve the grandest ould head of an Irish elk here, and I thought I’d risk her, to get a sight of it.”
“It’s over there,” Norah said, pointing to a mighty pair of horns on the wall behind the girl. Katty looked at it in silence.