M

I

ISS DEBORAH DUNN sat alone by her fire one dull afternoon in November. She was a maiden lady of an old-fashioned type, a type which nowadays has become almost as extinct as the Dodo. She was very stiff and very prim, and the little gray curls which clustered round her forehead were very nearly as stiff as she was. And that is saying a good deal. Other unmarried women of her age had no gray curls. When their hair was not brown it was golden. They belonged to ladies' clubs in town and played golf and croquet in the country, and some of them rode to hounds. They travelled, and went to theatres and dinners and bridge parties, and enjoyed life generally, but Miss Deborah Dunn considered theatres and bridge inventions of the devil, and had never even crossed the threshold of a ladies' club. The brief November afternoon drew rapidly in and the servant came in to light the gas. "Bring tea directly Mrs. Blake arrives, Susan," said Miss Dunn.

Her manner to servants, indeed to every one, was dignity itself.

"I think that's her a-ringing at the bell now," remarked Susan, confidentially. And in another instnt she announced the visitor.

"Oh, my dear Deborah! I have had such a rush to get to you," exclaimed. the new arrival. She was a fair, fluffy little woman, wrapped in furs, with eyes that were always laughing, even when her lips were grave.

"Oh, are those muffins?" she went on, as she sank into a low chair near the little tea-table. "How delicious! Do give me some tea at once! I am half

frozen. Jack Tracy and his sister kept me talking ever so long about our theatricals next month-they are going to be 'great,' I can tell you! But why don't you speak? You have not even said 'how d'ye do' to me yet!"

"I have not had an opportunity, so far," remarked Miss Dunn, grimly. "I have noticed that it is usually a matter of some difficulty to get in a word when an Irishwoman is talking. They monopolize the entire conversation."

Mrs. Blake laughed delightedly.

"Ah, now don't be so severe, you dear old thing. At present, I believe I am the only person in the world-certainly in the county-who is not afraid of you, but I won't promise not to be if you look at me like that!"

Irishwoman's

The severity of Deborah's features relaxed a little. Although she disapproved of her friend's frivolity, there was something about the buoyant temperament which attracted her irresistibly, perhaps because it was so entirely the opposite of her own. Indeed, in the modern acceptation of the term, Miss Dunn could not be said to have a "temperament" at all.

"Did you notice that Susan opened the door to you instead of Jane?" she asked, solemnly.

"Yes," returned Mrs. Blake, eagerly. "What has happened to Jane? You were praising her up to the skies before I went to London a month ago. Has she turned out a gay deceiver, or what?"

"I am endeavoring to inform you, my dear Clare. The whole affair has been a great blow to me. She has gone-"

"Off with the spoons? Or mad? Or has she eloped with the vicar's gardener? He looks just the sort of puritanical man who would elope-the gardener I

"Kindly allow me to end my sentence. before your Celtic imagination entirely runs away with you," said Miss Dunn with an alarming access of dignity. "Jane has gone to be married."

Mrs. Blake sank back in her chair and took another muffin.

"Oh, is that all? Well, that sort of thing has happened once or twice before in the world's history. It is a way girls have, you know! But what is the blow?"

"Why, that is!" returned Miss Dunn, emphasizing her remark by a wave of the teapot. "She has left me for for a man! And I am without a parlor-maid. Susan is but a stop-gap; her manners leave a good deal to be desired, and she has a perpetual smut on her nose."

"Well, you know, Deborah, marriage usually implies a man! And we are told on good authority that it is a 'holy estate.' Though, really, sometimes nowadays-however, that's not the point. What I want to tell you is that I have a brilliant idea. Why don't you try an Italian? I can put my finger-metaphorically speaking, because she happens to be in Rome-on a perfect. a perfect treasure!"

"She would probably put her fingers into my jewel-box or my purse," remarked Miss Dunn with conviction. "No, I thank you, Clare, none of your benighted heathenish foreigners for me. A Papist, too!"

"Well, I am a Papist, if it comes to that," said Mrs. Blake, with a more pronounced laugh than usual in her blue. eyes. "And yet you allow me to have tea and muffins on your hearth-rug!"

"You are my friend, and although I strongly disapprove of your religion, I think it better to ignore the subject. I regret it, but I ignore it."

"Quite right," returned Mrs. Blake, cheerfully. "I regret yours, too, but I ignore it! But we are wandering from your parlor-maid. Now, look here, De

whom I can rely upon implicitly, says she knows a charming Italian girl who is dying to come to England as a parlormaid. She has English blood in her on her mother's side, so you may not find her so benighted and heathenish as you seem to imagine. And your money and jewels will be all right. That I can swear to."

Miss Dunn elevated a warning finger.

"Pray don't swear on my account, Clare. I am willing to take it for granted that you at any rate believe your statement to be correct. English blood, you say? Those Anglo-Italian marriages sometimes turn out very unfortunately. I know a case-”

She paused abruptly. Her eyes were fixed on the burning embers, but they were in reality gazing back into the long vanished past. Her only sister, perhaps the one being whom she had ever really loved in the whole course of her gray uneventful existence, had married an Italian against the wishes and protests of her entire family, a man of inferior birth to her own, and had gone to live in Naples. To her relatives in England she was as one dead, and even Deborah, who had loved the bright, laughing girl

some fifteen years her junior-with an almost maternal affection, had closed. the doors of her heart against her. And those doors, once closed, had been slow to open to any one else.

"Oh, they turn out unfortunately sometimes, no doubt," said Mrs. Blake, unconscious of the visions which her words had evoked, "but so do marriages. between people of the same nationality. Oh, that reminds me, I heard such a good story about Charlie Dodd and his wife—a woman told it to me at my club last week. She-"

"I must beg of you, Clare, not to sully my ears with the idle gossip-I trust it is no worse that you hear at the institution you are pleased to term your club! Let us return to your 'treasure.'

As I am so unfortunately situated I do not mind giving her a trial, especially as you say she is well vouched for, but, remember, if I find she is not all you say I shall never take your advice again."

"Oh, that will be all right," returned Mrs. Blake, complacently. She was of an optimistic turn of mind and had somehow very rarely cause to regret the faith that was in her. "You will thank me tremendously one day for recommending her; and now I must be offit's any hour!"

"It's exactly half-past five, to be accurate," put in Miss Dunn, reprovingly.

"Well, it's all the same. Good-bye, dear. Oh, by the way, her name is Concetta."

Miss Dunn sniffed.

"Well, what's the matter with that? It's quite an ordinary name over there. I will wire to Rosa Cross to-night to send her over immediately. I must rush -I have not a minute to lose! She ought to be here the end of next week. Good-bye-so glad Jane got married!" And with a rustle of silk-lined skirts she reached the door.

ting in her dotage to think of introdoocing such a thing into a clean, Christian, English kitchen."

"But it will be rather awkward, won't it?" hazarded Susan, reflectively. And as she spoke she made an ineffectual effort to remove the smut which adorned her nose. "Suppose, well-suppose one of us wants to speak our minds to 'erand we are pretty sure to do that-how shall we say it?"

The cook paused in her occupation of peeling potatoes to consider the question.

"I should say, 'Drat you, hold your row.' If she don't understand the words, she will see that we mean it abusive like, and that's about all that matters."

Susan, however, thought differently. It seemed to her essential that the intrusive stranger should fully grasp the drift of the uncomplimentary remarks which she had every intention of making to her in the near future, and she presently expressed her intention of going up-stairs to interview her mistress upon this vital point.

At this moment the drawing-room

tatedly. "Stop a moment-I-”

But Clare was gone.

II

"Well, I never did!"

The exclamation was uttered by Susan of the perpetual smut, and her audience of one, the excessively stout individual who presided over Miss Dunn's kitchen, echoed it, remarking that she "never did either!"

right--more upright than usual if such a thing were possible-in a straightbacked chair by the fire, an open letter in her hand.

"The new parlor-maid arrives on Monday, Susan, and I trust that you and Eliza will treat her with due politeness, and not forget the fact that she is a foreigner in a strange land.”

"An Italian, too!" continued Susan dolefully.

her lingo?"

"We shan't be able to speak to 'er at all," replied cook, with an air of finality. "And so much the better-a nasty frogeating foreigner! Missus must be get

know-"

Miss Dunn regarded her with an air of dignified disapproval.

"She can speak your language; there will be no awkwardness of that descrip

tion. Do you suppose I should have engaged a foreigner at all unless she was in a position to exchange communications with her fellow servants? Her name is Concetta, by the way, but I think I shall adopt some English appellation for her. You may go, Susan. I only wished to impress upon you that I wish peace and tranquility to reign under these altered circumstances."

"Yes, mum, I hope so, mum," returned Susan doubtfully. "Bless my soul," she muttered reflectively, as she closed the drawing-room door behind. her, "one can't make 'ead or tail of what missus is driving at sometimes, she uses such plaguey long words. Sounds like a chapter out of the Bible, somehow, when she talks!"

"Well, it's a mercy the Italian will understand when we do the perlite to her! Concetta, indeed! There's a nice heathenish name for you!"

And three days later Concetta came. She was quite young, not more than two or three and twenty, and decidedly pretty, with a pair of beseeching brown eyes which seemed to be asking every one to be kind to her. They glanced confidingly up at Miss Dunn on her first introduction to that austere lady, and even caused a fleeting smile to relax the severity of Deborah's thin lips.

"I hope," she said, speaking in a higher key than usual, as is the habit of the British when addressing foreigners, "that you will get on with your fellow servants. You will probably find their ways and modes of thought different to your own, but there must be no disputes in my kitchen."

Concetta gazed at her in bewildered silence, but made no reply.

"Do you understand?" demanded. Miss Dunn, peremptorily.

"Not quite, madam," faltered Concetta, her eyes more appealing than ever. "But you speak English, don't you? I was given to understand you did. And you are half English, are you not?"

"Yes, madam, my mother is English, but I do not understand all the words you use. Some I have never heard before."

"Oh, I see," returned Deborah with an air of relief. "I was afraid you spoke no English at all. Well, I suppose I must use more simple language to you until you have mastered the intricacies of our tongue."

"In-tri-cacies? what is that, madam?" inquired Concetta, timidly.

"Oh, I really can't explain-you Iwould not understand me. I will ring for Susan to show you your room. Oh, and that reminds me, there must be no religious discussion' whatsoever downstairs."

"No what, madam?"

"No talk of religion!" shouted Miss Dunn. "Dear me, how fatiguing conversation is with a foreigner! You are a Roman Catholic, are you not?"

"I am a Catholic, yes," replied Concetta, with the relieved air of one who has at last hit upon the word of the enigma. "But I am not a Roman-my father is a Neapolitan."

"I don't know what you mean," retorted Miss Deborah, with some irritation. "Your father being a Neapolitan has nothing to do with it. You worship the Virgin Mary, don't you, and you think that all the Pope does must be right?"

"Oh, no!" replied Concetta, briskly. "I love and reverence the Madonna, but I only worship God, and some of the Popes have done very wrong things."

It was Miss Dunn's turn to look bewildered. The theories of a lifetime were, she felt, being upset by the calm remarks of this as she mentally described her "ignorant Papist," and she experienced the feelings of one who, suddenly submerged in deep water, struggles vainly to reach the shore.

"I am fully conversant with all the pernicious doctrines held by Roman Catholics," she remarked with dignity,

"I belong to the 'Unadulterated Bible Society,' which has already done good work in your benighted country. However, we need not discuss the subject any longer. I will see that my servants are not contaminated by your influence, and-"

But here, greatly to Concetta's relief, Susan made her appearance and the girl was conducted to her room.

"Ere you are!" said the former. "And 'ow do you like this country, as far as you've got?"

Concetta's

appealing brown eyes fixed themselves on the speaker's nose, where the smut still triumphed over time and circumstances. She was beginning to find unforeseen difficulties in the English language, and with the rapid intuition of her nation she realized that her fellow servant, who spoke so oddly, regarded her with no friendly feelings. Miss Dunn, too, was appallingly cold and stiff, not a bit like her own English mother, and she began to wish herself back again in the sunny land she had left. "You can speak, can't you?" continued Susan, irritably-"English, I mean. Missus said as how you could."

"Oh, yes," faltered Concetta; "pardon me, I did not quite understand."

Susan regarded her wonderingly. "Seems one of the meek lot," she reflected. "We shan't have much trouble with her; knows her place, she does!" And cook, to whom she presently related this fact, agreed that it was a good beginning. And as it began, so it went on. Concetta quickly adapted herself to her new surroundings, while her English blood stood to her in many emergencies, and her unfailing good temper soon won for her the friendly tolerance of her companions in the kitchen.

About a month after her arrival Mrs. Blake came in to tea, and on the new parlor-maid's opening the door to her addressed her in Italian with more volubility than grammar.

"How do you like being here?" she demanded. "Rather a change after Italy, isn't it?"

Concetta smiled. She found the newcomer decidedly "simpatica," and the conversation might have been unduly prolonged had not Miss Dunn made her appearance on the scene.

"If you wish to speak to Concetta, kindly speak English, my dear Clare. I want her, as far as possible, to forget her own heathenish language. And in any case, you can leave her alone for the present."

Mrs. Blake laughed as she followed her hostess' upright figure into the drawing-room.

"She seems quite a success," she remarked, as she unfastened her furs and seated herself in a low chair by the fire. "And what a pretty girl she is, too! You call her Concetta, I see. I thought you were going to re-christen her Jemima Jane, or something as frightful? And I hope you let her go to Mass on Sundays? And, do tell me, aren't you glad I persuaded you to have her?"

Miss Dunn regarded her guest grimly through her spectaacles.

"Which question do you wish me to answer first?" she inquired. "You have asked me four, without waiting to take breath!"

"Oh, take your choice!" returned Mrs. Blake, airily. "It's all one to me. But I can see for myself she is a great improvement on Jane. Between ourselves, Deborah, I should not be surprised if she was not quite what she appears to be!"

Miss Dunn started.

"Explain yourself, Clare!" she said, severely. "Your friend Mrs. Cross vouched for her respectability. I trust," she added nervously, alarm overcoming her dignity, "that she is not a—a female Jesuit, or anything of that sort! There is no occasion for you to laugh in that senseless fashion-it is you yourself who