Norah looked embarrassed.
“Jim says I’ve no soul beyond mustering cattle,” she said, laughing. “We’ll prove him wrong, some day, Miss de Lisle, shall we? Now I must go: the motor will be back presently.” She turned, suddenly conscious of a baleful glance.
“Oh!—Mrs. Atkins!” she said feebly.
“I came,” said Mrs. Atkins stonily, “to see if any help was needed in the kitchen. Perhaps, as you are here, miss, you would be so good as to ask the cook?”
“Oh—nothing, thank you,” said Miss de Lisle airily, over her shoulder. Mrs. Atkins sniffed, and withdrew.
“That’s done it, hasn’t it?” said the cook-lady. “Well, don’t worry, my dear; I’ll see you through anything.”
A white-capped head peeped in.
“’Tis yersilf has all the luck of the place, Katty O’Gorman!” said Bride enviously. “An’ that Sarah won’t give me so much as a look-in, above: if it was to turn down the beds, itself, it’s as much as she’ll do to let me. Could I give you a hand here at all, Miss de Lisle? God help us, there’s Miss Norah!”
“If ’tis the way you’d but let her baste the turkey for a minyit, she’d go upstairs reshted in hersilf,” said Katty in a loud whisper. “The creature’s destroyed with bein’ out of all the fun.”
“Oh, come in—if you’re not afraid of Mrs. Atkins,” said Miss de Lisle. Norah had a vision of Bride, ecstatically grasping a basting-ladle, as she made her own escape.