“I am going in a few moments, Norah.  Go right on.”

Norah moved aside her boiler, drew a frying-pan from her closet, put in a lump of fat and laid in a piece of coarse beef some two pounds in weight.  A loaf of bread came next, and was cut up, the peculiar white indicating plainly what share alum had had in making the lightness to which she called my attention.  A handful of tea went into the tall tin teapot, which was filled from the kettle at the back of the stove.

“That isn’t boiling water, is it?” I ventured.

“It’ll boil fast enough,” Norah answered indifferently as she pulled open the draughts, and soon had the top of the stove red hot.  The steak lay in its bed of fat, scorching peacefully, while the tea boiled, giving off a rank and herby smell.

“Pat doesn’t get home to dinner, then, Norah?”

“There’s times he does, but mostly not.  They’d like a hot bite an’ sup, but it’s too far off.  There’s five goes from here together, an’ a pailful for each—­bread an’ coffee mostly, an’ a bit o’ bacon for some.  It’s a hot supper I used to be gettin’ him, but the times is too hard, an’ we’re lucky if we can have our tea an’ bread, an’ molasses maybe for the children.  Many’s the day I wish myself back in old Ireland.”

As she talked the children came rushing up the stairs, Norah the second, pale-faced and slender, leading the way; and I took my leave, burning to speak, yet knowing it useless.  Fried boot-heel would have been as nourishing and as tooth-some as that steak, and boiled boot-heel as desirable and far less harmful a drink, yet any word of suggestion would have roused the quick Irish temper to fever-heat.

“It’s Norah can cook equal to myself,” Norah had said with pride as she emptied the black and smoking mass into a dish; and these methods certainly cannot be said to be difficult to follow.

There is no conservatism like the conservatism of ignorance, yet in this case want of knowledge there certainly was not.  Norah had lived for two years before her marriage with a family the mistress of which had taught her patiently and indefatigably till she became able to set a fairly-cooked meal upon the table, but the knowledge acquired then seemed to have been laid aside as having no connection with her own life.  I have seen the same thing—­though, happily, only in exceptional cases—­among educated Indians, girls who had spent years in the schools at Faribault or under the direct training of missionaries reverting on marriage to old wigwam habits, and content to eat the parched corn and boiled dog of their early experience.  The same law holds in full force among many of the Irish, who, no matter how well trained or how exacting in their demand for varied food while servants, quickly lose the desire, and allow only a certain fixed order from which it is wellnigh impossible to move them.