136 SPORTING REMINISCENCES 



" Not those. Mine. Hi, mine are here," the 

 small boy held out his own tiny wooden things. 



" Ah, ye take the small size, sir, but the big 

 ones 'd match ye the best," said the man very 

 gravely. 



We took another Irish soldier servant to Eng- 

 land and tried to teach him to wait. 



His waiting consisted of standing bashfully at 

 the sideboard drumming at it with his fingers and 

 going to attention with a shiver of nervousness 

 when " Cox " was called out. 



He arrived bashfully, as he did all things, in 

 the drawing-room when I had been out all day, 

 with some cards grouped in his hands. 



These he held out obliquely, he never did any- 

 thing straight. 



" There was four gintlemen called, ma'am, and 

 they left these tickets." 



He ended by losing his heart to Ellen, my cook, 

 whom I had brought from the North of Ireland, 

 and was quite the ugliest woman I have ever seen. 



My first cook in England was also Irish, I got 

 her from Cork. I had rather a tall house joined 

 to another at Colchester, it was my first experience 

 of town Hfe, and apparently Mary, the lady sent 

 by the registry office had lived her life in small 

 villas. 



She was a thin wiry Httle person with an evil 

 eye, and she got out of the cab to poise herself at 

 the garden gate as one completely disgusted. 



