graying hair, peeped in at the door. "Good morning, Lizzie--I
was just going to ring for you. Has Miss Dale had breakfast--I
know it's shamefully late."

"Good morning, Miss Neily," said Lizzie, "and a lovely morning it is,
too--if that was all of it," she added somewhat tartly as she came
into the room with a little silver tray whereupon the morning mail
reposed.

We have not yet described Lizzie Allen--and she deserves
description. A fixture in the Van Gorder household since her
sixteenth year, she had long ere now attained the dignity of a
Tradition. The slip of a colleen fresh from Kerry had grown old
with her mistress, until the casual bond between mistress and
servant had changed into something deeper; more in keeping with
a better-mannered age than ours. One could not imagine Miss
Cornelia without a Lizzie to grumble at and cherish--or Lizzie
without a Miss Cornelia to baby and scold with the privileged
frankness of such old family servitors. The two were at once a
contrast and a complement. Fifty years of American ways had not
shaken Lizzie's firm belief in banshees and leprechauns or tamed
her wild Irish tongue; fifty years of Lizzie had not altered Miss
Cornelia's attitude of fond exasperation with some of Lizzie's
more startling eccentricities. Together they may have been, as
one of the younger Van Gorder cousins had, irreverently put it,
"a scream," but apart each would have felt lost without the other.

"Now what do you mean--if that were all of it, Lizzie?" queried
Miss Cornelia sharply as she took her letters from the tray.