‘What’s your name?’

‘Moggy Sullivan, if you please, Ma’am.’

‘And what’s yours?’

’Lizabet—­Betty they call me—­Madam; Lizabet Burke, if you please, Madam.’

’Well, then, Moggy Sullivan and Elizabeth Burke, harkee both, while I tell you a thing.  I’m mistress here by law, as you’ve just heard, and you’re my servants; and if you so much as wind the jack or move a tea-cup, except as I tell you, I’ll find a way to punish you; and if I miss to the value of a pin’s head, I’ll indict you for a felony, and have you whipped and burnt in the hand—­you know what that means.  And now, where’s Mistress Sarah Harty? for she must pack and away.’

‘Oh!  Ma’am, jewel, the poor misthress.’

‘I’m the mistress, slut.’

‘Ma’am, dear, she’s very bad.’

‘Where is she?’

‘In her room, Ma’am,’ answered Betty, with blubbered cheeks.

‘Where are you going, minx?’ cried M. M., with a terrible voice and look, and striding toward the door, from which Moggy was about to escape.

Now, Moggy was a sort of heroine, not in the vain matter of beauty, for she had high cheek bones, a snub nose, and her figure had no more waist, or other feminine undulations, than the clock in the hall; but like that useful piece of furniture, presented an oblong parallelogram, unassisted by art; for, except on gala days, these homely maidens never sported hoops.  But she was, nevertheless, a heroine of the Amazonian species.  She tripped up Pat Morgan, and laid that athlete suddenly on his back, upon the grass plot before the hall door, to his eternal disgrace, when he ‘offered’ to kiss her, while the fiddler and tambourine-man were playing.  She used to wring big boys by the ears; overawe fishwives with her voluble invective; put dangerous dogs to rout with sticks and stones, and evince, in all emergencies, an adventurous spirit and an alacrity for battle.

For her, indeed, as for others, the spell of ‘M.  M.’s’ evil eye and witchlike presence was at first too much; but Moggy rallied, and, thus challenged, she turned about at the door and stoutly confronted the intruder.

‘Minx, yourself, you black baste; I’m goin’ just wherever it plases me best, and I’d like to know who’ll stop me; and first, Ma’am, be your lave, I’ll tell the mistress to lock her door, and keep you and your rake-helly squad at the wrong side of it, and then, Ma’am, wherever the fancy takes me next—­and that’s how it is, and my sarvice to your ladyship.’

Off went Moggy, with a leer of defiance and a snap of her fingers, cutting a clumsy caper, and rushed like a mad cow up the stairs, shouting all the way, ‘Lock your door, Ma’am—­lock your door.’

Growing two or three degrees whiter, M. M., so soon as she recovered herself, glided in pursuit, like the embodiment of an evil spirit, as perhaps she was, and with a gleam of insanity, or murder, in her eye, which always supervened when her wrath was moved.