The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1902-01-20
Bertha y Houce.
BY JULIA M. cRoTTIE.

The old weather-slated house at the
corner of Kilcullen High street where
it ended at the churchyard, was the
most important residence in the town,
and Miss Hoffman and her niece, Miss
Bertha, were looked up to by thdlr
neighbors, the shopkeepers, as very
considerable" people indeed. They
dressed well, kept a housemaid and cook,
attended the Presbyterian church, had
$500 year in. their joint right, and
showed many other signs and tokens of
gentility. Among the latter was the
fact of their descent from the Palatines,
a colony that more than a century ago
came over from Germany and settled in
the interior of the county. The colenists
long preserved their ways and habits Of
the home country, and even now on the
clear winter evening, when Miss Bertha
stood looking dreamily out at the street
there was a fragrance through the house
that was not grateful to the sentiment
tai mood which she was indulging.
Good gracious!' she cried, impatient
ly, "sauerkraut again! 1t is abominable
that aunt will persist in having that
wretched stuff. 1 never touch 1t, and
still, year after year, she will have those
horrid cabbages cut up and barreled and
cooked" The odor was, in truth, over
towering, and only to be compared to
to Bertha's mind, made a too frequent
appearance on the Hoffman table. But
these viands and pancakes, and potato
and herring salads, We're part of the
old times to which Miss Hoffman, chung
with the same affection that she did to
the old German family Bible, the double
feather beds, and the other ancestral
housekeeping items.
But Bertha's irritation was only mo-
ter Weighing on her. Mrs. Quirke the
doctors wife, had called that afternoon,
and among other bits of gossip had told
them that tile O'Kearney was going off
to Italy with the regiment of Papal Zou-
ayes that he had raised in the county.
"a man of fifty, my dear, think Of
that-risking his life and limb in a
hopeless cause"
1t was worse than hopeless in Miss
Bertha's Presbyterian eyes, but all the
same, since it was he who was doing it,
something gallant and generous seemed
to mingle with the rash "Papistry'' of it.
They had known the O'Kearney since
the time, six years ago, when Bertha s
father and aunt had fallen into a little
fortune by the death of a relative in
America, and had given up their farm
and settled in the town. Some Of the
money had been invested in a small
erty of the O'Kearney, whose people had
once owned half the county. The nego-
tiations consequent on the transfer of
the piece of ground had brought the
country gentleman into acquaintance
with the Palatine household, and some
thing in the homely life there-the order
and peace and calm of it-had been at
tractive to him. The women of the fam
lily were wonderfully German in their
looks; he was actually astonished, at
first speech with them, to hear instead Of
the cultural Fatherland accents, the soft
Kerry tongue. He had stormy times at
home, querulous old mother, sisters
who sat in disconsolation because hunt
ing and ball-going were no longer posi-
BILE to them, and who were wearing into
grim, hopeless old-maidenhood, after the
hightiest, gayest youth.
The isolation from old friends for he.
and his were too proud to force them
selves on those whose warmth had wan
ed with the O'Kearney fortunes, the sui
len gloom of the sour sisters broken by
scenes Of recrimination between them
selves and the peeVish mother-all gentle
feeling seemed to have been annihilated
in them by their troubles-the poverty.
the ill-ordered home in the lodgings over
the chandlery shop, where no servant
could be kept, and where nobody was
willing or able to do a servants work.