“Well!” I uttered. “Literary genius may make you do queer things, Mrs. McNab, but it needn’t give you the manners of a jungle pig!”
CHAPTER VII
I FIND SHEPHERD’S ISLAND
MY queer encounter with my employer did not, luckily, hinder my sleep: I went to bed, and knew nothing more until Julia brought me a cup of tea at seven o’clock. It was long after my usual time for rising, and I felt almost panicky as I glanced at my watch.
“Oh, Julia, I’m awfully late!” I said ruefully. “Why didn’t you call me before?”
“Is it me to be callin’ you?” was Julia’s inquiry. “Sure, it’s glad I am to see you taking a bit of a rest. I dunno why would you always want to be leppin’ from your bed before annywan in the house—you, that’s afther tellin’ me you want to get fat!”
“And so I do,” I said. “But it makes all the day easier if I have a good start. Julia, this tea is heavenly!”
“Drink it slow and aisy, then,” said Julia. “No need to gulp it as if you were emptyin’ a cup for a wager. And you’ll do no more worrk than you can’t help doin’ this fine day, miss: remember ’tis a picnic you have before you, and the finest day ever I seen to enjoy it in. There’s no sense in goin’ out worrn to the bone with slaving for them as doesn’t notice it.”
“Don’t you believe it, Julia,” I told her, laughing. “Mrs. McNab as good as said yesterday that she couldn’t do without me!”
“Yerra, I knew that,” said Julia with great calmness. “What I didn’t know was that she’d woke up enough to find it out! Well, good luck to the poor woman—it seems there’s sense comin’ to her in her ould age!”
“Why, she isn’t old at all,” I said. “I don’t think she is much over forty—she told me she had married when she was just out of the schoolroom.”