Mrs. Alexander was, or so her friends said, somewhat given to vaunting herself of her paragons, under which heading, it may be admitted, practically all her household were included.  She was, indeed, one of those persons who may or may not be heroes to their valets, but whose valets are almost invariably heroes to them.  It was, therefore, excessively discomposing to her that, during the following week, in the very height of apparently cloudless domestic tranquillity, the housemaid and the parlour-maid should in one black hour successively demand an audience, and successively, in the floods of tears proper to such occasions, give warning.  Inquiry as to their reasons was fruitless.  They were unhappy:  one said she wouldn’t get her appetite, and that her mother was sick; the other said she wouldn’t get her sleep in it, and there was things—­sob—­going on—­sob.

Mrs. Alexander concluded the interview abruptly, and descended to the kitchen to interview her queen paragon, Barnet, on the crisis.

Miss Barnet was a stout and comely English lady, of that liberal forty that frankly admits itself in advertisements to be twenty-eight.  It was understood that she had only accepted office in Ireland because, in the first place, the butler to whom she had long been affianced had married another, and because, in the second place, she had a brother buried in Belfast.  She was, perhaps, the one person in the world whose opinion about poultry Mrs. Alexander ranked higher than her own.  She now allowed a restrained acidity to mingle with her dignity of manner, scarcely more than the calculated lemon essence in her faultless castle puddings, but enough to indicate that she, too, had grievances. She didn’t know why they were leaving.  She had heard some talk about a fairy or something, but she didn’t hold with such nonsense.

“Gerrls is very frightful!” broke in an unexpected voice; “owld standards like meself maybe wouldn’t feel it!”

A large basket of linen had suddenly blocked the scullery door, and from beneath it a little woman, like an Australian aborigine, delivered herself of this dark saying.

“What are you talking about, Mrs. Griffen?” demanded Mrs. Alexander, turning in vexed bewilderment to her laundress, “what does all this mean?”

“The Lord save us, ma’am, there’s some says it means a death in the house!” replied Mrs. Griffen with unabated cheerfulness, “an’ indeed ‘twas no blame for the little gerrls to be frightened an’ they meetin’ it in the passages—­”

“Meeting what?” interrupted her mistress.  Mrs. Griffen was an old and privileged retainer, but there were limits even for Mrs. Griffen.

“Sure, ma’am, there’s no one knows what was in it,” returned Mrs. Griffen, “but whatever it was they heard it goin’ on before them always in the panthry passage, an’ it walkin’ as sthrong as a man.  It whipped away up the stairs, and they seen the big snout snorting out at them through the banisters, and a bare back on it the same as a pig; and the two cheeks on it as white as yer own, and away with it!  And with that Mary Anne got a wakeness, and only for Willy Fennessy bein’ in the kitchen an’ ketching a hold of her, she’d have cracked her head on the range, the crayture!”