hut ourselves up here
for a day, now and then, and have awful bouts of cookery. How did you
like the potato cakes at tea, by the way?"

"They were perfect," Norah said. "I never tasted better, even in
Ireland." At which Katty, who had just entered with a saucepan,
blushed hotly, and cast an ecstatic glance at Miss de Lisle.

"I don't suppose you did," remarked that lady. "You see, Katty made
them."

"Wasn't she good, now, to let me, Miss Norah?" Katty asked. "There's
them at home that towld me I'd get no chance at all of learning under
a grand cook here. 'Tis little the likes of them 'ud give you to do
in the kitchen: if you asked them for a job, barring it was to wash
the floor, they'd pitch you to the Sivin Divils. 'Isn't the scullery
good enough for you?' they'd say. 'Cock you up with the cooking!'
But Miss de Lisle isn't one of them--and the cakes to go up to the
drawing-room itself!"

"Well, every one liked them, Katty," Norah said.

"Yerra, hadn't I Bridie watching behind the big screen with the crack
in it?" said the handmaid. "She come back to me, and she says,
'They're all ate,' says she: ''tis the way ye had not enough made,'
she says. I didn't know if 'twas on me head or me heels I was!" She
bent a look of adoration upon Miss de Lisle, who laughed.

"Oh, I'll make a cook of you yet, Katty," she said. "Meanwhile you'd
better put some coal on the fire, or the oven won't be hot enough for
my pastry. Is it early breakfast for your brother and Mr. Wally, Miss
Linton?"

"I'm afraid so," Norah said. "Jim said they must leave at eight
o'clock."

"Then that means breakfast at seven-thirty. Will you have yours with
them?"

"Oh yes, please--if it's not too much trouble."

"Nothing's a trouble--certainly not an early breakfast," said Miss de
Lisle. "Now don't worry about anything."

Norah went back to the hall--to find it deserted. A buzz of voices
came from the billiard-room; she peeped in to find all the soldiers
talking with her father listening happily in a big chair. No one saw
her: she withdrew, and went in search of Mrs. West, but failed to find
her. Bride, encountered in her evening tour with cans of hot water,
reported that 'twas lying down she was, and not wishful for talk: her
resht was more to her.

"Then I may as well go and dress," Norah said.

She had just finished when a quick step came along the corridor, and
stopped at her door. Jim's fingers beat the tattoo that wa