light of battle was in her eye.
“We—we thought we wouldn’t wait, Bridget,” said Mr.—er—What’s-His-Name, quickly. “You never come back till six or seven, you know, so––”
“Who’s been monkeyin’ wid my kitchen?” 25 demanded Bridget. She started to unbutton one of her gloves and the movement was so abrupt and so suggestive that he got up from his chair in such a hurry that he overturned it.
“Somebody had to get lunch,” he began.
“I wasn’t sp’akin’ to you,” said Bridget, glaring past him at Annie.
He gulped suddenly. For the second time that day his eyes blazed. Things seemed to be dancing before them.
“Well, I’m speaking to you!” he shouted, banging the table with his clenched fist.
“What!” squealed Bridget, staggering back in astonishment.
He remembered Phoebe.
“You’d better run over to the Butlers’, Phoebe, and have lunch,” he said, his voice trembling in spite of himself. “Run along lively now.”
Bridget was still staring at him like one bereft of her senses when Phoebe scrambled down from her chair and raced out of the room. He turned upon the cook.
“What do you mean by coming in here and speaking to me in that manner?” he demanded, shrilly. 26
“Great God above!” gasped Bridget weakly. She dropped her glove. Her eyes were blinking.
“And why weren’t you here to get lunch?” he continued, ruthlessly. “What do we pay you for?”
Bridget forgot her animosity toward Annie. “What do yez think o’ that?” she muttered, addressing the nursemaid.
“Get back to the kitchen,” ordered he.
Cook had recovered herself by this time. Her broad face lost its stare and a deep scowl, with fiery red background, spread over her features. She imposed her huge figure a step or two farther into the room.
“Phat’s that?” she demanded.
She weighed one hundred and ninety and was nearly six feet tall. He was barely five feet five and could not have tipped the beam at one hundred and twenty-five without his winter suit and overcoat. He moved back a corresponding step or two.
“Don’t argue,” he said, hurriedly.
“Argue?” she snorted. “Phy, ye little shrimp, who are you to be talkin’ back to me? For two cents I’d––” 27
“You are discharged!” he cried, hastily putting a chair in her path—but wisely retaining a grip on it.
She threw back her head and laughed, loudly, insultingly. Her broad hands, now gloveless and as red as broiled lobsters, found resting-places on her hips. He allowed his gaze to take them in with one hurried, sweeping glance. They were as big and as menacing as a prizefighter’s.
“We’ll discuss it when you’re sober,” he made haste to say, trying to wink amiably.
“So help me Mike, I haven’t touched a––” she began, but caught herself in time. “So yez discharge me, do yez?” she shouted.
“I understood you had quit, anyway.”
“Well, me fine little man, I’ll see yez further before I’ll quit now. I came back this minute to give notice, but I wouldn’t do it now for twenty-five dollars.”
“You don’t have to give notice. You’re discharged. Good-bye.” He started for the sitting-room.
She slapped the dining-table with one of her big hands. The dishes bounced into the air, and so did he. 28
“I’ll give this much notice to yez,” she roared, “and ye’ll bear it in mind as long as yez stay in the same house wid me. I don’t take no orders from the likes of you. I was employed by Miss Duluth. I cook for her, I get me pay from her, and I’ll not be fired by anybody but her. Do yez get that? I’d as soon take orders from the kid as from you, ye little pinhead. Who are yez anyhow? Ye’re nobody. Begorry, I don’t even know yer name. Discharge me! Phy, phy, ye couldn’t discharge a firecracker. What’s that?”
“I—I didn’t say anything,” he gasped.
“Ye’d better not.”
“I shall speak to—to Miss Duluth about this,” he muttered, very red in the face.
“Do!” she advised, sarcastically. “She’ll tell yez to mind yer own business, the same as I do. The idee! Talkin’ about firing me! Fer the love av Mike, Annie, what do yez think av the nerve? Phy Miss Duluth kapes him on the place I can’t fer the life av me see. She’s that tinder-hearted she––”
But he had bolted through the door, slamming it after him. As he reached the bottom of the stairs leading to his bedroom the 29 door opened again and Annie called out to him:—
“Are you through lunch, sir?”
He was halfway up the steps before he could frame an answer. Tears of rage and humiliation were in his baby-blue eyes.
“Tell her to go to the devil,” he sputtered.
As he disappeared at the bend in the stairs he distinctly heard Annie say:—
“I can see myself doing it—not.”
For an hour he paced the floor of his little bed-chamber, fuming and swearing to himself in a mild, impotent fashion—and in some dread of the door. Such words and sentences as these fell from his lips:—“Nobody!” “Keeps me on the place!” “Because she’s tender-hearted!” “I will fire her!” “Can’t talk back to me!” “Damned Irisher!” And so on and so forth until he quite wore himself out. Then he sat down at the window and let the far-away look slip back into his troubled blue eyes. They began to smart, but he did not blink them.
Phoebe found him there at four when she came in for her nap. He promised to play croquet with her. 30
Dinner was served promptly that evening, and it was the best dinner Bridget had cooked in a month.
“That little talk of mine did some good,” said he to himself, as he selected a toothpick and went in to read “Nicholas Nickleby” till bedtime. “They can’t fool with me.”
He was reading Dickens. His wife had given him a complete set for Christmas. To keep him occupied, she said.
31
CHAPTER II
MISS NELLIE DULUTH
