Beautiful but Poor — page 78: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

meee BEAUTIFUL BUT POOR. 69 CHAPTER XIV. A MARKED CHANGE. “Ochone! The ould boy has got into the mistress, to be sure, and ali to wanst. Here’s real round steak, and i’m ordered to broil it nice for the breakfast, instead of frying it in hog-fat like I used to; and there’s twice as much as we ever had before. And she has got fresh bread in the basket! And Lit- tle Jess is cackling round like a pullet after corn, and the mistress said I wasn’t to spake a cross word to her. Sure, I belave the worruld is comin’ to an end. Iamto put two cups of ground coffee in the pot instead of one, and I’m not to water the milk any more after the milk-man laves it, but take two quarts instead of one. Ido belave the ould maid is a-goin’ crazy. She looks as if she had been a-cryin’ all night; and there’s that Jess a-settin’ the table, and a-singin’ like a little canary. Id like to slap the jade over; I’d make her sing like a cat with a basin of hot water on its hide!”’ Thus Biddy Lanigan heralded the'sudden change in her department of Miss Scrimp’s boarding-house. It was evident she did not like it. It gave her a good deal more work—and hotter work; for the steak, formerly fried till too hard to be eatable, on the range, now had to be broiled over hot coals. “T’ll have « raise 0’ wages for this, or Ill lave,” she muttered, as she turned the juicy steak. Tor she knew how to cook it nicely when it had to be done. She had ever kept and cooked the best in a proper way for her mistress and herself. GComicboo cS EOr