Frank remembered it as a drear-looking, lonesome place during the
occupancy of the former incumbent. Instead, he found a reclaimed garden;
hedges of laurel, trim and straight; old-fashioned flowers, snowballs,
gillybells, great pink-and-white peonies; and over the front on
trellises, by the gate and doorway, scrambles of scarlet roses against
the green and the ivied walls.

In the doorway Nora O'Grady, a short, wide woman of fifty or thereabout,
was singing at a spinning-wheel. She had a kind, yellow face with high
cheek-bones, and dark eyes which seemed darker by reason of the snowy
hair showing under a mob cap. Her chin was square and pointed upward
like old Mother Hubbard's, and she could talk of batter-cakes or home
rule with humorous volubility, and smoke a pipe with the manner of a
condescending duchess.

She had, as Frank found afterward, an excellent gift at anecdote, but a
clipping pronunciation of English by reason of having spoken nothing but
the Erse until she was grown. Added to this was an entirely illogical
ignorance of certain well-known words, and Katrine told him later that
once when Nora was asked if the dinner was postponed, she answered: "It
was pork."

For fifteen years this strange old creature and her boy Barney had
followed the seesawing fortunes of the Dulanys, accompanying their
gypsy-like sojournings with great loyalty and joyousness.

She rose from her spinning as Ravenel approached.

"Is Miss Katrine at home?" he inquired.