So we did, and we afterward thought that this would be a good motto
for Mrs. Mullarkey to carve over the door of Knockarney House. (My
name for it is adopted more or less by the family, though Francesca
persists in dating her letters to Ronald from 'The Rale Thing,'
which it undoubtedly is.) We take almost all the rooms in the
house, but there are a few other guests. Mrs. Waterford, an old
lady of ninety-three, from Mullinavat, is here primarily for her
health, and secondarily to dispose of threepenny shares in an
antique necklace, which is to be raffled for the benefit of a Roman
Catholic chapel. Then we have a fishing gentleman and his bride
from Glasgow, and occasional bicyclers who come in for a dinner, a
tea, or a lodging. These three comforts of a home are sometimes
quite indistinguishable with us: the tea is frequently made up of
fragments of dinner, and the beds are always sprinkled with crumbs.
Their source is a mystery, unless they fall from the clothing of the
chambermaids, who frequently drop hairpins and brooches and buttons
between the sheets, and strew whisk brooms and scissors under the
blankets.

We have two general servants, who are supposed to do all the work of
the house, and who are as amiable and obliging and incapable as they
well can be. Oonah generally waits upon the table, and Molly cooks;
at least she cooks now and then when she is not engaged with Peter
in the vegetable garden or the stable. But whatever happens, Mrs.
Mullarkey, as a descendant of one of the Irish kings, is to be
looked upon only as an inspiring ideal, inciting one to high and
ever higher flights of happy incapacity. Benella ostensibly
oversees the care of our rooms, but she is comparatively helpless in
such a kingdom of misrule. Why demand clean linen when there is
none; why seek for a towel at midday when it is never ironed until