AGHOLE is, I suppose, one of the most insignificant railway stations in the kingdom. The single line which it serves diverges from the main line at “the Junction”; and was constructed originally in re- sponse to the demands of a great local magnate who owned an historic peerage, and (in former days) half the countryside. Aghole station was built for his convenience, and remains as such unto this day.
 The unimportance of the station is, however, more than balanced by the self-importance of the station-master. He reigns over his exceedingly abbreviated domain with all the traditional arrogance of petty princes, and regards his office as nothing less than the lynch-pin of the entire railway system of the country. I am not sure that in his most grandiloquent moments he does not look upon the Company of which he is a servant as his personal possession, and the board of directors as his vassals. Anyhow, his demeanour leaves nothing to be desired in assertiveness and consciousness of his own worth.
 The station consists of a small shed built of stone, with a slated roof, somewhat out of repair, and containing a single wooden bench for the benefit of waiting passengers. The inner walls of this edifice are chipped and grimy, and their decoration is furnished by railway time-tables (generally a month or two out of date a trifling drawback, since nobody ever dreams of consulting them), interspersed with large posters announcing weekly and monthly fairs, and auction bills regarding sales of hay and oats and other farm produce. In another small box-like erection at one end of the platform, and close beside the solitary gate which gives ingress and egress to the station, is the ticket-office. Within it the station-master sits with the utmost official pomp, and from it he directs the activities of his sole subordinate, a youth of some sixteen summers, who might, from his chief’s manner, be a complete staff at a large terminus rather than one forlorn-looking lad. The arrival of a train brings forth the station-master to the platform with an air of great grandeur. There is quite a touch of magnificence in the manner in which, when “she is signalled from the Junction”; he emerges from the ticket-office, locking [515] the door behind him. De scending passengers are treated strictly according to their class. First-class (rare birds these) with high distinction, third-class with contumely, and second-class (to which most of us adhere) with moderate respect, pleasingly informed with cordiality according to the place we occupy in Mooney’s affections. For Bartholomew Mooney, station-master of Aghole, is a respecter of persons undisguisedly and deliberately, and his high esteem of the qualities fitted for his own office does not include impartiality. Indeed a less impartial person it would be difficult to discover even in Ireland. This is the more remarkable since, according to his own account, his favourite axiom is: “Be civil to all, but familiar with few.” So far as his practice goes, the reverse would be more correct, for he is familiar with almost everybody and civil to none. Sometimes I am inclined to think that he looks upon all railway passengers as potential criminals banded together in a nefarious conspiracy to rob the Company and torment its servants; at other times, as more or less harmless but hopeless imbeciles flung by a mysterious providence into his care. To such he is very officious in his attentions. He will pursue one down the platform brandishing the implement with which he nicks the tickets, and will have no compunction in nicking an arm or a leg in order to arrest one’s attention, shouting meanwhile—
 "Where are ye goin’? Come back out o’ that. Don’t ye know very well the train’s going th’ other way?”
 And when one mildly protests that one is aware of that fact, and is merely wishing to exercise oneself to the length of the platform, he only grunts, and observes ungraciously—
 “Well, an’ how was I to know that! Be the way ye were goin’, I thought ‘twas tryin’ to cross the line ye were, in conthravintion of the Company’s bye-laws.”
 To strangers he is invariably haughty, not to say rude. This is partly to display his own importance, to which, as a rule, they are reprehensibly blind, and secondly, because of his innate suspicion of unknown persons. I was standing on the platform one day when an irate passenger descended from the train and demanded in peremptory accents an interview with the station-master. He found himself confronted by a tall, lean, unkempt man, bareheaded and untidily clad in a nondescript mixture of official and civilian garments.
 "Ask the station-master to come here”; said the passenger curtly.
 "Here, is it!”was the response. “Arrah, an’ what more ‘ here’ d’ye want him?”
 The traveller eyed the speaker impatiently.
 "Perhaps if you won’t bring him here”; he said coldly, [516] “you will be good enough to inform him that my luggage is missing.”
 “Missing, is it ? Who do ye think yer spakin’ to?”
 "I’m sure I haven’t an idea”; was the reply in a nettled tone.
 “I wouldn’t doubt ye”; observed the station-master of Aghole with cutting sarcasm. “‘Tisn’t ideas the like o’ you have, I’m thinking, but if ye have enough wit to get here at all ye have enough to understand that the station-master of this tairminus is me!”
 “You!” The traveller’s lips formed the ejaculation, but did not utter it.
 "What did ye do with yer luggage, and where have ye come from? “continued the station-master inquisitorially.
 “Dublin. And my luggage was put in the van, and labelled Aghole; it consisted of a suit-case, a hat-box, and a trunk.”
 In perfect silence the station-master turned on his heel and led the way to the ticket-office, the passenger following. Arrived there, the former personage sat down at his desk and opened a dingy ledger. Therein he wrote down slowly the catalogue of missing articles just enumerated.
 “When may I expect to see them?”inquired their owner.
 “Bedad, whenever ye like”; was the reply; “’tis more than I can tell ye.”
 Exasperation mounted high in the traveller’s voice.
 “Do you understand”; he shouted, “that you have lost my luggage?”
 “D’you undtherstand the Company’s bye-laws?”
 “Bye-laws be—”
 “Faith, ye might be that yerself first.”
 “Once for all, understand that if my luggage is not forthcoming one suit-case, one hat-box, and one trunk I shall make a formal complaint to headquarters, and I shall tell them pretty plainly what I think of you.”
 “Aye, that’s the best thing ye can do, and don’t forget about me, whatever ye do.”
 "It is monstrous to leave an impudent blackguard like you in charge of a station.”
 “I’m not black, and I never was a guard, so you’re out there.”
 The other stamped.
 “If my luggage one suit-case, one hat-box, and one trunk.”
 “’Tis a great wondther, so it is “the drawling accents fell across the furious reiteration “that the Lord Almighty didn’t make ye an elephant instead of an ass, for then ye could have travelled with yer trunk in front of ye all the time.”
 Recent events have necessitated some revision of the number and hours of the trains at Aghole. The station-master’s summary is brief.
 “’Tis the way it is now and till further notice the seven-ten goes at six-fifteen, and the eight-five at nine, and the nine-ten at eight-fifty, and there’s [517] no last train at all, for they’ve taken it off.”
 There is always considerable latitude in the departure of trains from Aghole: they have even been known to stop and wait at the sight of the carriage or motor of some person of consequence. On the other hand, a train is at times curiously tardy in its departure. This happened to be the case on one occasion when a traveller on her way back to England was so benighted as to expect it to start punctually. Exasperated by a lengthy and seemingly meaningless delay, the lady thrust her head out of the window more than once and accosted the station-master impatiently. Twice in response his only reply was: “Augh, sure that’ll be all right”; while to in creasingly anxious inquiries all he vouchsafed was—
 “Sit where ye are, can’t ye. That’ll be all right now.”
 And again—
 "If ye be botherin’ me like this the train’ll never start at all.”
 At last, after an absolutely agonised appeal, he raised his voice, and in lazy accents called out to the engine-driver
 “Are ye goin’ on there, Mick?”
 “Goin’ on! Sure, isn’t the signal agin me?”
 “The signal.” The drawl slid into a snort. “Ah, how mighty pertikler ye are all of a suddint. Ye’d betther be goin’ on when I tell ye!” there’s a lady down here in a terrible hurry.”
 And the train started.
 The dream of Bartholomew Mooney’s life is to be station-master at the “Joonction.”He always speaks as if the position could be his for the asking, and this in spite of the fact that many station-masters have come and gone at the Junction during the years in which he has been at Aghole. Yet he persists in the belief that he may be sent there any day. He intends, so he says, when he gets there, to expend some of his enormously increased pay in taking a trip to London. He has an extraordinary desire to see London, and he seems to separate it in his regard completely from England which he hates.
 “There’s no one is rightly a man o’ the worrld till he’s seen London”; is one of his most emphatic pronouncements, “and I’ll see it, please God, before I die, and be the aiquil of the best yet.”
 That, I imagine, has a good deal to do with his aspiration. He cannot bear to think that so many of the travellers over whom he lords it should have the advantage of him in this.
 He is intelligent enough to realise that London is the greatest city in the world, and, like most of his race, he has an unquenchable craving for greatness and splendour. All this, however, does not prevent him from being very offended [518] with any persons of his acquaintance who go to live there. He has never forgiven me for doing so; and though his welcome to me when I visit my native land is for him very gracious, he cannot refrain from ironical and mocking allusions to the supposed state and magnificence which I enjoy “in it!” I have never been able to decide whether a certain incident was planned by him as a satirical subtlety, or whether it was absolutely bona fide . Anyhow, I was leaving to return to London. He had been in structed to send up for my luggage and convey it to the station. I had been motored to Aghole from another part of the county, so I had not on this occasion arrived by train of all of which he was perfectly aware. One is never perturbed at Aghole by unpunctuality; still, on this occasion, after waiting until the last possible moment, it seemed fairly certain that if my luggage was to be conveyed to the station in time for the train by which I proposed to travel, it should be done by some means other than the station-master’s agency. Eventually it was crammed (not a very large quantity) into the two-seater, and we started. We got to a sharp turn in the very narrow road, flanked by rather high hedges, which is the “short cut” to the station, when we were within an ace of colliding with a monstrous vehicle, which seemed to be a cross between a furniture-van and a Carter Paterson conveyance. This extraordinary caravan, to which an exceedingly undersized horse was harnessed, had apparently got itself wedged immovably between the hedges. As the two-seater was pulled up with a jerk which nearly pitched us out, the face of the solitary subordinate at Aghole station peered at us round the side of the van. The owner of the face was seated on the side of the shaft in an attitude of contemplative patience.
 “Himself”; said the youth affably, “sent me for the lady’s luggage, but the harse was hard-set for to get the van along be anny manner o’ means, an’ it’s thinkin’ I am that it’s unyoke him we best do and pull it round out o’ this ourselves.”
 This we did, while I murmured my apprehensions as to the possibility of catching the train.
 "Is it catch her ye want ? Augh, sure that’ll be all right now. Himself’ll never let her go without ye. Bedad, he’ll be terrible mad at me stickin’ here. Why couldn’t ye come sooner; I’m in it this half- hour, so I am.”
 To my stunned inquiry as to the reason for sending this gigantic conveyance for such a trifling load as my luggage, he seemed to be able to find no response other than that himself ordered the van and not the cart, and the divil a ha’porth did he (the speaker) know about it. [519]
 “But yous had betther let me have it now or he’ll kill me if I go back without it.”
 To avert so awful a result, my little box, hold-all, and dressing-case were shot into the cavernous depths of the monster, and the undersized “harse”; still “hard-set”; proceeded to draw the conveyance to the station.
 We got there first by a long way. The station-master met us with bland nonchalance. He presented me with my ticket as if it were indeed a present from himself instead of a purchase from the Company.
 "And ’tis the luggage ye’ll be wanting labelled next”; he remarked graciously.
 “Yes”; I said, and I laughed; “did you think I was taking the furniture of a house back with me.”
 He looked at me with imperturbable gravity.
 “‘Tis not goin’ back to London ye’ll be an’ you tellin’ them in it that yer grand boxes and ladies’ dress-baskets was ground down like powder with pushin’ them into a small ould cart that’s only fit to carry a common tin trunk—aw no, I seen to that.”
 At this moment the van hove in sight laboriously wending its way, and finally brought itself to a standstill at the gate. Its contents were exhumed by the driver and laid at the station-master’s feet.
 “Is that the whole of them?” he asked.
 “It is.”
 He caught my eye.
 “Well, there’s ‘London’ for ye….”
 I looked away.

 Kate Higgin was known in our household as the Auxiliary. It must not be supposed that the name had any sinister meaning, for those were days long before any official significance appertained to the word. Kate Higgin received it simply because she was always available as a helper in emergencies. You could not have called her a charwoman; she was too incompetent. Indeed, any creature farther removed from competence surely never succeeded in earning a pittance. Her capacity for not doing any single thing well was extraordinary. Nevertheless there was nothing she would not attempt to do if required, an endearing quality especially in the eyes of domestic servants. The latter knew they could count upon Kate; and “sure she was that willing, the crature, ye could never have the heart to blame her.”And the curious part of it was that one never had, perhaps not so curious after all, for there was something in her personality that slew censoriousness even against its will.
 Her appearance was the last word in unprofessional standards. [520] She never to my knowledge possessed an apron (one would think an indispensable adjunct to household work), and never wore any except those lent to her by the servants. She would then tie it on carelessly over her black “jacket”; an outdoor garment to which inside the house she clung tenaciously. Her figure was slight, her head small, her face thin, and her teeth dreadfully neglected, yet her deficiencies were discounted by the gentleness and sincerity of her countenance; indeed, there was in her regard something of the wistful fidelity of a dog’s eyes. A pure soul looked out through them.
 She walked shufflingly. I can still hear the slish of her footsteps over the stone-flagged basement of our house, the result, no doubt, of the fragmentary wisps which she called her boots. There was a tradition that Kate Higgin lived with her brother. This may have been so, but whenever I visited her in the room which she inhabited she was always alone except for her cats. She had four, and loved them impartially. Her heart, I think, was divided between her cats and her religion, odd as this may sound. She would do anything in her power to help a human being, and her kindness of heart would never have failed any of God’s creatures; but one had the feeling with her that truly there was none for her to love, and that such treasures of affection as she possessed were concentrated upon the two objects I have mentioned. She was profoundly pious, with that piety which the Irish peasant achieves with such apparent ease. She went “to the chapel “every morning of her life at six o’clock.
 “Ye see”; she observed to me once, “I don’t mind then what happens; I’ve got mass, and if I didn’t go, then maybe I wouldn’t get it all day with the work.”
 Nothing could be more matter-of-fact and nothing less pietistic than her manner of saying this. I do not think that Kate Higgin could read or write at all events with any ease yet she was universally reported to be “terrible well up in religion.” Exactly how this pitch of perfection was attained was never explained, but it may well be due to Him who giveth light and understanding to the simple.
 One always knew when Kate was in the house by the in describably soothing effect which she seemed to have upon the household. No fuss disturbed her, and she appeared to be almost superhumanly immune from crossness in herself and unaffected by it in others. On the other hand, her presence, it must be confessed, was sometimes revealed by untoward happenings. A sudden and appalling crash of china or crockery betokened that “Kate Higgin, God help her, had let the tray out of her hand again.” Once, when a particularly valuable dessert [521] dish had been smashed to atoms, Kate took to her bed, and could not be persuaded to come near us for quite a long time. She reappeared one day bearing an extraordinarily hideous cover-dish for vegetables which she solemnly presented in lieu of that which she had broken. Till she had saved enough money to purchase this she “couldn’t look the place in the face.”
 Kate’s manner was ingenuous like herself, and her favourite ejaculation was, “Ah, for goodness sake!” “She varied this with “The Lord be praised!”—the variation coming in curiously.
 “Ah, for goodness sake, how are you?” was her invariable greeting, while misfortune usually evoked the second adjuration.
 “’Tis the worst weather was ever known, so it is, and I’ve got an awful cold, the Lord be praised!”
 In a very severe winter her manifold employments included clearing our hall-door steps of snow. I do not know at what hour of the morning she started on this herculean task, but somewhere about noon I discovered her laboriously scraping for dear life with a broken shovel whose handle had about six inches of length left to it. She desisted for a moment when she saw me, and stood upright, gazing at me with an air as amiable as if she had but just emerged from a luxurious bed. With the temperature well below freezing-point, beads of moisture were standing upon her forehead!
 I said I thought she might have been provided with a better implement for the purpose than the broken shovel. She stared at it meditatively, and then at the steps from which after hours of toil she had succeeded in clearing about four square feet of snow.
 “Ah, for goodness sake, an’ sure ’twould be an ‘act’ if it wasn’t broken, but I’m doubtless (Kate always said doubtless, meaning doubtful) whether they’ve ‘ere a wan a bit better within.”
 My interposition brought “they” in the shape of cook on the scene.
 "An’ for the love o’ God, and is that what yer at, Kate Higgin, this day?” Cook’s voice, irate and dictatorial, rose shrilly: “Sure, wouldn’t any one in the earthly worrld know that ye’d never get the snow off with the like o’ that, only yerself. Why don’t ye get a spade out o’ the garden?” The vials of cook’s wrath poured freely having once started. “I declare to God, ’tis heart-scalded any one would be tryin’ to insinse knowledge into the like of you. Go and get a spade this instant minute; d’ye hear what I’m sayin’ to ye?”
 Kate let the broken shovel slide out of her hand gracefully, and slished down the steps meekly.
 “The Lord be praised, an’ I never thought of a spade.”
 Kate wears many of my old [522] hats. They look extraordinarily well upon her. In fact, I never like my hats half so well until they have parted from my head and found themselves on hers. Her appreciation of their beauty is always whole-hearted; but she is not careful to wear them in the manner intended by the milliner. I have known her persistently wear one back to front, and even place another sideways upon her head. However, this is for her consideration, not mine. She is very proud of them, and has often remarked that there’s not many like her that do be wearing real quality hats in the chapel. Over one she was especially grateful; its “style and grandeur” was such that “I give ye me worrd, th’ aulthur boys in the chapel was civil to me when they seen it, and sure all the worrld knows that them aulthur boys is the most impident young rooffians on the face of the earth.”