g eyes,
with whom it seemed useless to have any subterfuges.

"You don't be afeard I'll tell, me Lady. I keep meself to meself, away
from the commonality round about here. She needn't have gone for me.
I'd have held my tongue. 'Twasn't likely I'd want to set tongues
clackin' about her that was good to me. As I sez to the little
lady...."

Terror seized upon Lady O'Gara. What had the old woman said to Stella?

"You didn't tell the young lady anything?" she said, very gently,
remembering not to frighten the frail old creature before her.

"Not me. I said no more than 'Your Mamma's left.'" She looked with a
peering anxiety into Lady O'Gara's face, as though she had just begun
to doubt her own wisdom. "I didn't do any harm sayin' them words, did
I? Didn't I know they was that to each other, seein' them through the
chink in the curtain lovin' an' kissin'?"

Was it possible that Stella knew? Anyhow it was no use frightening old
Lizzie.

"No, no," Lady O'Gara said. "You did nothing wrong. Only remember, I
depend on you for silence. The people are so fond of gossip about here
like all country-people."

"I let them go their own ways an' I go mine," Miss Brennan said, and
looked down at the sticks which she had dropped. "I don't know who's
goin' to pick them up," she said plaintively. "I've picked them up
wance an' me ould knees are goin' under me. I don't consider I could
do it twicet."

"I'll pick them up and carry them for you," Lady O'Gara said. "It is
not far to your lodge. Indeed you ought not to be picking up sticks or
carrying them. I'll speak to Patsy Kenny. He'll see that some dry
wood is sent down to you, as much as you want. You have only to ask
for it to have it any time. That is, if I forget."

"Thank your Ladyship kindly," Miss Brennan said with one of the dips
which perhaps kept her limbs "souple" as she said. "I'll be glad o'
the dry sticks. The green do be makin' me cry. All the same I like to
pick up sticks. Isn't it what the Lord sends us, what matter if
they're green itself. 'Tis the chancey things I love havin'--the
musharoons and the blackberries,--straight from God, I call them. But
I couldn't let your Ladyship carry sticks for the like o' me. I hope I
know me place better. If your Ladyship was to give me a hoosh up wid
them? My back's not too bent if only they was to be tied in a bundle."

She performed a series of little dips which would have made Lady O'Gara
s