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.