Mrs Connor liked to be spoken of as "the wash-lady at the Palace."
Yet proud as she was of this appellation, she was not satisfied with
being an excellent laundress. She was a person of ambitions. To be
the owner of a lodging-house, like the Baroness, was her leading
ambition, and to possess a "peany" for her young daughter Kathleen
was another.
She kept her mind fixed on these two achievements, and she worked
always for those two results. And as mind rules matter, so the
laundress became in time the landlady of a comfortable and
respectable lodging-house, and in its parlour a piano was the chief
object of furniture.
Kathleen Connor learned to play; and at last to the joy of the
lodgers, she married and bore her "peany" away with her. During the
time when Mrs Connor was the ambitious "wash-lady" at the Palace,
Berene Dumont came to live there; and every morning when the young
woman carried the tray down to the kitchen after having served the
Baroness with her breakfast, she offered Mrs Connor a cup of coffee
and a slice of toast.
This simple act of thoughtfulness from the young dependant touched
the Irishwoman's tender heart and awoke her lasting gratitude. She
had heard Berene's story, and she had been prepared to mete out to
her that disdainful dislike which Erin almost invariably feels
towards France.
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