sob.

Mrs. Alexander concluded the interview abruptly, and descended to the
kitchen to interview her queen paragon, Barnet, on the crisis.

Miss Barnet was a stout and comely English lady, of that liberal forty
that frankly admits itself in advertisements to be twenty-eight. It was
understood that she had only accepted office in Ireland because, in the
first place, the butler to whom she had long been affianced had married
another, and because, in the second place, she had a brother buried in
Belfast. She was, perhaps, the one person in the world whose opinion
about poultry Mrs. Alexander ranked higher than her own. She now allowed
a restrained acidity to mingle with her dignity of manner, scarcely more
than the calculated lemon essence in her faultless castle puddings, but
enough to indicate that she, too, had grievances. _She_ didn't know why
they were leaving. She had heard some talk about a fairy or something,
but she didn't hold with such nonsense.

"Gerrls is very frightful!" broke in an unexpected voice; "owld
standards like meself maybe wouldn't feel it!"

A large basket of linen had suddenly blocked the scullery door, and
from beneath it a little woman, like an Australian aborigine, delivered
herself of this dark saying.

"What are you talking about, Mrs. Griffen?" demanded Mrs. Alexander,
turning in vexed bewilderment to her laundress, "what does all this
mean?"

"The Lord save us, ma'am, there's some says it means a death in the
house!" replied Mrs. Griffen with unabated cheerfulness, "an' indeed
'twas no blame for the little gerrls to be frightened an' they meetin'
it in the passages--"

"Meeting _what_?" interrupted her mistress. Mrs. Griffen was an old and
privileged retainer, but there were limits even for Mrs. Griffen.

"Sure, ma'am, there's no one knows what was in it," returned Mrs.
Griffen, "but whatever it was they heard it goin' on before them always
in the panthry passage, an' it walkin' as sthrong as a man. It whipped
away up the stairs, and they seen the big snout snorting out at them
through the banisters, and a bare back on it the same as a pig; and the
two cheeks on it as white as yer own, and away with it! And with that
Mary Anne got a wakeness, and only for Willy Fennessy bein' in the
kitchen an' ketching a hold of her, she'd have cracked her head on the
range, the crayture!"

Here Barnet smiled with ineffable contempt.

"What I'm tellin' them is," continued Mrs. Griffen, warming