"I thought they looked nice from here," I said.
"Don't sit on his chairs, unless you have your will made," she said.
"Did I see a looking-glass?" I asked.
"Oh yes! to curl his hair, I suppose. And a pianney to play polkas."
"It isn't as solid as ours, Hannah," I said. This opened the flood-gates of wrath.
"No," she said, in that accent of sarcasm in which an Irish peasant is past master, "nor purtier. Look at that sophy now. Isn't it fit for any lady in the land? And these chairs? Only for the smith, they'd be gone to pieces long ago. And that lovely carpet? 'T would do for a flag for the 'lague.' You haven't one cup and saucer that isn't cracked, nor a plate that isn't burnt, nor a napkin, nor a tablecloth, nor a saltcellar, nor—nor a—nor a—"
"I'll tell you what, Hannah," I said. "Father Letheby is going to show us what's what. I'll furnish the whole house from top to bottom. Was that his housekeeper?"
"I suppose so," she said contemptuously. "Some poor girl from an orphanage. If she wasn't, she wouldn't wear them curifixes."
I admit that Hannah's scorn for my scanty belongings was well bestowed. The sofa, which appeared to affect her æsthetic sense most keenly, was certainly a dilapidated article. Having but three legs, it leaned in a loafing way against the wall, and its rags of horsehair and protruding springs gave it a most trampish and disreputable appearance. The chairs were solid, for the smith had bound them in iron clamps. And the carpet?—Well, I pitied it. It was threadbare and transparent. Yet, when I looked around, I felt no feminine scorn. They all appealed to me and said:—
"We have been forty years in your service. We have seen good things and evil things. Our faces are familiar to you. We have spent ourselves in your service."