McCrae?" were the words with which, in no gentle tones, she assailed
Mammy as she entered the kitchen.

"I did as I was bid, Bridget," said Mammy, with a sigh.

"And indade it wouldn't be me would do as I was bid, if I was bid to do
the like o' that. I'd rather coot off my right hand than use it to turn
the kay on the darlint."

"I always mind my mistress, Bridget," said Mammy, "though it's often I'm
forced to pray for patience wi' her."

"And indade I don't ask for patience wid her at all, anny how," stormed
Bridget. "To think of sending the swate child, that never has anny but a
kind an' a pleasant word for _iverybody_, away to the cold room, just
because the brat she doats on chooses to _yowl_ in the fashion he did
the morn. I don't know, indade, what's the matther with the woman! I
think it's a quare thing, and an _on nattheral_ thing, _anny how_!"

"She's much to be blamed, no doubt, Bridget, and yet there's excuses to
be made for my mistress," said Mammy, mildly. "She's young yet in years,
no but twenty-two; and she's nothing but a child in her ways and her
knowledge. She never knew the blessing of a mither's care, puir thing;
and up to the very day she was married, her life was passed at one o'
them fashionable boarding-schules, where they teach them to play on
instruments, and to sing, and to dance, and to paint, and to talk some
unchristian tongue that's never going to do them no good for this life
nor the next. But they never give them so much as a hint that they've
got a soul to be saved, and they take no pains to fit them to be wives
and mothers. My mistress was but fifteen years old when she ran away