“An’ whativer they may say o’ me ways down-stairs, it’s the timper of a babby I have, an’ would niver throw a harrd wurrd at a dog, let alone a human.  Whin they think me cross, it’s only that I’m a bit quoiet, an’ who can wonder? thinkin’ o’ me pore brother as was drownded las’ summer, an’ him niver out o’ me moind!”

I weakly allowed her to stay upon promise of good and peaceable behavior, and tried to make the best of her, as she had of the place.

One September day, just when the physician, called in to see a dear young guest, had expressed his fear that she was sickening for a serious illness, Katy gave warning.  “Her feelin’s would not allow her to stay in a house where there was sickness.  It always reminded her of her pore, dear brother what was drownded las’ summer, an’ a sick pairson made a quare lot o’ extra work, even when it was considered in the wages.  She’d be lavin’ that day week, her month bein’ up then.”

Happily, the threatening of illness was a false alarm, but Katy is going.  The city is filling up, and many “best families” must re-open their town-houses in time for the school terms.  She looks as happy at the prospect of a return to area-gossip and Sunday flirtation as I feel at getting rid of her.  I have made with her a farewell round of pantries, refrigerator, and cellar.  Valuable articles are missing—­notably two solid silver tablespoons and a dozen fine napkins.  At the back of the barn a pile of brushwood masks a Monte Testaccio of china and cut-glass.  Dirt is in every corner; glass-towels have been degraded into dish and floor-cloths; saucepans are burned into holes; tops are lacking to pots and pails.

For all this there is no redress.  When I made a stand upon the “case of spoons,” as being old family silver, the housemaid declared that Katy had used them often to stir soup and porridge, and Katy retorted with gusts of brine and brogue that she “wouldn’t be accountable for things that didn’t belong to her business.”

Altogether, my amiable willingness that she should take her leave without shaking more dust from her feet upon an already burdened household, had become impatient desire by the time I counted out her wages.  Yet, here she stands, grim as the sphinx, fixed as Fate, with the inexorable requisition, “Me refrunce, mum!”

“What could I say of you Katy?” I ask, miserably.

“What any leddy whatsomever, as is a leddy, would say!  What lots o’ other leddies, as leddylike as enny leddy could wish to be, ridin’ in their coaches an’ livin’ in houses tin times ’s big as this, leddies as had none but leddylike ways, has said!” is the tautological response.  “I’ve served yez, fair an’ faithful, for six mont’s, and it stan’s to rayson as I wouldn’t ‘a’ been let to stay that long onder yer ruff if so be I hadn’t shuited yez.”

She has me there, and she knows it.  Inwardly, I retract some of the hard things I have thought and said of Mrs. ... of No ...  West Fifty-seventh street.  Having let the creature abide under her roof for eleven months, she must justify herself for the act.  She meant to leave town, as I mean to go back to town, and, like me, truckled weakly to expediency.  Nevertheless, her weakness did me a real wrong.