“There’s a man by the name of Mike,” said Molly, “a nager, though you wouldn’t think it from his name.  He helps me sometimes, an’ he helps iverybody else other times.”

“Is that the man?” said La Fleur, looking out of the window.

“That’s him, mum,” said Molly; “he’s jest goin’ to the woodpile with his axe.”

“I wish to speak to him,” said La Fleur, and with a very slight nod of the head she left the kitchen by the door that led into the grounds.

Looking after her, Molly exclaimed,—­

“Drat you, for a stuck-up, cross-grained, meddlin’, bumble-bee-backed old hag of a soup-slopper; to come stickin’ yer big nose into other people’s kitchens!  If there was a rale misthress to the house instead of the little gal upstairs, you’d be rowled down the front steps afore you’d been let come into my kitchen.”  And with this she returned to her potatoes.

La Fleur stopped at the woodpile, as if in passing she had happened to notice a good man splitting logs.  In her blandest voice she accosted Mike and bade him good-day.

“I think you must be Michael,” she said.  “The cook has been speaking of you to me.  My name is La Fleur.”

Mike, who had struck his axe into a log, touched his flattened hat.

“Yes, mum,” he said; “Mr. Griffing has been tellin’ me that.  Are you lookin’ for any of the folks?”

“Oh no, no,” said La Fleur; “I am just walking about to see a little of this beautiful place.  You don’t mind that, do you, Michael?  You keep everything in such nice order.  I haven’t seen your garden, but I know it is a fine one, because I saw some of the vegetables that came out of it.”

Mike grinned.  “I reckon it ain’t the same kind of a garden that you’ve been used to, mum.  I’ve heerd that you cooked for Queen Victoria.”

“Oh no, no,” said La Fleur, dropping her head on one side so that her smile made a slight angle with the horizon; “I never cooked for the queen, no indeed; but I have lived with high families, lords, ladies, and ambassadors, and I don’t remember that any of them had better potatoes than I saw to-day.  Is this a large farm, Michael?”

“It’s considerable over a hundred acres, though I don’t ’xactly know how much.  Not what you’d call big, and not what you’d call little.”

“But you grow beautiful crops on it, I don’t doubt,” remarked La Fleur.

“Can’t say about that,” said Mike, shaking his head a little.  “I ’spects we’ll git good ’nough craps for what we do for ’em.  This ain’t the kind of farm your lords and ladies has got.  It’s ramshackle, you know.”

“Ramshackle?” repeated La Fleur.  “Is that a sort of sheep farm?”

Mike grinned.  “Law, no, we ain’t got no sheep, and I’m glad of it.  Ramshackle farmin’ means takin’ things as you find ’em, an’ makin’ ’em do, an’ what you git you’ve got, but with tother kind of farmin’ most times what you git, ye have to pay out, an’ then you ain’t got nuthin’.”