to hear of praties?) Why, them's the principal mate of Ireland, where I kim from."
"Oh! but we have corrupted the name into potatoes; such a shame not to keep the idiom of a language! Bridget—do you mind if I call you Biddie? It is more euphonious, and modernizes the old classic appellation. What is this liquid in the pan here?"
"Och, murder! Where wuz ye raised? That's millick, fresh from the cow."
"Millick? That is the vernacular, I suppose, of milk; and that thick, yellow coating?"
"Is crame. (Lord, such ignorance!)"
"Crame! Now, Biddie, dear, I must get to work. I'm going to make a cake all out of my own head for Henry—he's my lover, Biddie—to eat when he comes to-night."
Bridget [aside]: "It's dead he is, sure, if he ates it!"
"I've got it all down here, Biddie, on my tablet: A pound of butter, twenty eggs, two pounds of sugar, salt to your taste. No, that's a mistake. Oh, here it is! Now, Biddie, the eggs first. It says to beat them well; but won't that break the shells?"
"Well, I'd break thim this time if I were you, Miss Cicely; they might not set well on Mister Henry's stummack if ye didn't," said Bridget pleasantly.
"Oh! I suppose the shells are used separately. There! I've broken all the eggs into the flour. I don't think I'll use the shells, Biddie; give them to some poor people. Now, what next? Oh, I'm so tired! Isn't housework dreadful hard? But I'm glad I've learned to make cake. Now, what shall I do next, Biddie?"
"Excuse me, Miss Cicely, but you might give it to the pigs. It's meself can't see any other use for it," said Bridget, very crustily.
"Pigs! O Biddie! you don't mean to say that you have some dear, cunning little white pigs! Oh, do bring the little darlings in and let me feed them! I'm just dying to have one for a pet! I saw some canton-flannel ones once at a fair, and they were too awfully sweet for any thing."
Just then the bell rang, and Bridget returned to announce Mr. Henry; and Cicely told Bridget she would take another lesson the next day: and then she went up-stairs in her chintz apron and mob-cap, with a little dab of flour on her tip-lifted nose, and told Henry she was learning to cook; and he told
