d, and lacking in small refinements. Phyl was conscious of the
fact that Byrne had placed several terrible old knives on the table,
knives that properly belonged to the kitchen, and when the second course,
consisting of a boiled chicken, faced by a piece of bacon reposing on a
mat of boiled cabbage, appeared, the fact that one of the dishes was
cracked confronted her with the equally obvious fact that the cook in her
large-hearted way had sent up the chicken with the black legs unremoved.

It seemed to Phyl's vision--now thoroughly distorted--that the eyes of the
stranger were everywhere, cool, critical, and amused; so obsessed was her
mind with this idea that it could take no hold upon the conversation.
Pinckney was talking of the States; he might just as well have been
talking about Timbuctoo for all the impression he made on her with her
unfortunate head filled with cracked dishes, chickens' black legs, Byrne's
awkwardness and the suddenly remembered crumb-brush.

It was twenty years old and it had lost half of its bristles in the
service of the Berknowles who had clung to it with a warm-hearted tenacity
purely Irish.

"Sure, that old brush is a disgrace to the table," was the comment Phyl's
father had made on it once, just as though he were casually referring to
some form of the Inevitable such as the state of the weather.

The disgrace had not been removed and it was coming to the table, now, in
the hand of Byrne. Phyl watched the crumbs being swept up, she watched the
cloth being taken off and the wine and dessert placed in the good old
fashion, on the polished mahogany, then leaving the gentlemen to their
wine, she retired upstairs and to her bedroom.

She felt angry with Byrne, with the cook, with Mr. Hennessey and with
herself. Plenty of people had been to dinner at Kilgobbin, yet she had
never felt ashamed of the _menage_ till now. This stranger from over the
water, notwithstanding her dislike for him, had the power to disturb her
mind as few other people had disturbed it in the course of her short life.
Other people had put her into worse tempers, other people had made her
dislike them, but no one else had ever roused her into this feeling of
unrest, this criticism of her belongings, this irritation against
everything including herself.

Her bedroom was a big room with two windows looking upon the park; it was
almost in black darkness, but the windows shewed in dim, grey oblongs and
she made her way to o