“Faith,” she exclaimed as she admitted them, “an’ it ’s mighty glad I am to see ye ag’in, Misther Payterson!  An’ how hev ye be’n, Misther Payterson, sence I see ye lahst?”

“Middlin’ well, Mis’ Flannigan, middlin’ well, ‘ceptin’ a tech er de rheumatiz.  S’pose you be’n doin’ well as usual?”

“Oh yis, as well as a dacent woman could do wid a drunken baste about the place like the lahst coachman.  O Misther Payterson, it would make yer heart bleed to see the way the spalpeen cut up a-Saturday!  But Misther Todd discharged ‘im the same avenin’, widout a characther, bad ’cess to ‘im, an’ we ‘ve had no coachman sence at all, at all.  An’ it ’s sorry I am”——­

The lady’s flow of eloquence was interrupted at this point by the appearance of Mr. Todd himself, who had been informed of the men’s arrival.  He asked some questions in regard to Wellington’s qualifications and former experience, and in view of his recent arrival in the city was willing to accept Mr. Peterson’s recommendation instead of a reference.  He said a few words about the nature of the work, and stated his willingness to pay Wellington the wages formerly allowed Mr. Peterson, thirty dollars a month and board and lodging.

This handsome offer was eagerly accepted, and it was agreed that Wellington’s term of service should begin immediately.  Mr. Peterson, being familiar with the work, and financially interested, conducted the new coachman through the stables and showed him what he would have to do.  The silver-mounted harness, the variety of carriages, the names of which he learned for the first time, the arrangements for feeding and watering the horses,—­these appointments of a rich man’s stable impressed Wellington very much, and he wondered that so much luxury should be wasted on mere horses.  The room assigned to him, in the second story of the barn, was a finer apartment than he had ever slept in; and the salary attached to the situation was greater than the combined monthly earnings of himself and aunt Milly in their Southern home.  Surely, he thought, his lines had fallen in pleasant places.

Under the stimulus of new surroundings Wellington applied himself diligently to work, and, with the occasional advice of Mr. Peterson, soon mastered the details of his employment.  He found the female servants, with whom he took his meals, very amiable ladies.  The cook, Mrs. Katie Flannigan, was a widow.  Her husband, a sailor, had been lost at sea.  She was a woman of many words, and when she was not lamenting the late Flannigan’s loss,—­according to her story he had been a model of all the virtues,—­she would turn the batteries of her tongue against the former coachman.  This gentleman, as Wellington gathered from frequent remarks dropped by Mrs. Flannigan, had paid her attentions clearly susceptible of a serious construction.  These attentions had not borne their legitimate fruit, and she was still a widow unconsoled,—­hence Mrs. Flannigan’s