It proved altogether easier for Martha, now Francie was at home again.

"You see, I can tend her an' sandwich in some work besides," Mrs.

Slawson explained cheerfully. "An' Ma's a whizz at settin' by bedsides helpin' patients get up their appet.i.tes. Says she, 'Now drink this nice gla.s.s o' egg-nog, Francie, me child,' she says. 'An' if you'll drink it, I'll take one just like it meself.' An' true for you, she does. The goodness o' Ma is astonishin'."

Then one day Sam Slawson came home with a tragic face.

"I've lost my job, Martha!" he stated baldly.

For a moment his wife stood silent under the blow, and all it entailed.

Then, with an almost imperceptible squaring of her broad shoulders, she braced herself to meet it, as she herself would say, like a soldier.

"Well, it's kinder hard on _you_, lad," she answered. "But there's no use grievin'. If it had to happen, it couldn't 'a' happened at a better time, for you bein' home, an' able to look after Francie, will give me a chance to go out reg'lar to my work again. An' before you know it, Francie, she'll be running about as good as new, an' you'll have another job, an' we'll be on the top o' the wave. Here's Miss Claire, bless her, payin' me seven dollars a week board, which she doesn't eat no more than a bird, an' Sammy singin' in the surplus choir, an' gettin'

fifty cents a week for it, an' extra for funer'ls (it'd take your time to hear'm lamentin' because business ain't brisker in the funer'l line!). Why, _we_ ain't no call to be discouraged. You can take it from me, Sammy Slawson, when things seem to be kinder shuttin' down on ye, an' gettin' black-like, same's they lately been doin' on us, that ain't no time to be chicken-hearted. Anybody could fall down when they're knocked. That's too dead-easy! No, what we want, is buck up an' have some style about us. When things shuts down an' gets dark at the movin'-picture show, then it's time to sit up an' take notice. That means somethin's doin'--you're goin' to be showed somethin' interestin'.

Well, it's the same with us. But if you lose your sand at the first go-off, an' sag down an' hide your face in your hands, well, you'll miss the show. You won't see a bloomin' thing."

And Martha, sleeves rolled up, enveloped in an enormous blue-checked ap.r.o.n, returned to her a.s.sault on the dough she was kneading, with redoubled zeal.

"Bread, mother?" asked Sam dully, letting himself down wearily into a chair by the drop-table, staring indifferently before him out of blank eyes.

"Shoor! An' I put some currants in, to please the little fella. I give in, my bread is what you might call a holy terror. Ain't it the caution how I can't ever make bread fit to be eat, the best I can do? An' yet, I can't quit tryin'. You see, home-made bread, _if it's good_, is cheaper than store. Perhaps some day I'll be hittin' it right, so's when you ask me for bread I won't be givin' you a stone."

She broke off abruptly, gazed a moment at her husband, then stepped to his side, and put a floury hand on his shoulder. "Say, Sam, what you lookin' so for? You ain't lost your sand just because they fired you?

What's come to you, lad? Tell Martha."

For a second there was no sound in the room, then the man looked up, gulped, choked down a mighty sob, and laid his head against her breast.

"Martha--there's somethin' wrong with my lung. That's why they thrown me down. They had their doctor from the main office examine me--they'd noticed me coughin'--and he said I'd a spot on my lung or--something. I shouldn't stay here in the city, he said. I must go up in the mountains, away from this, where there's the good air and a chance for my lung to heal, otherwise--"

Martha stroked the damp hair away from his temples with her powdery hand.

"Well, well!" she said reflectively. "Now, what do you think o' that!"

"O, Martha--I can't stand it! You an' the children! It's more than I can bear!"

Mrs. Slawson gave the head against her breast a final pat that, to another than her husband, might have felt like a blow.

"More'n you can bear? Don't flatter yourself, Sammy my lad! Not by no means it ain't. I wouldn't like to have to stand up to all I could ackch.e.l.ly bear. It's G.o.d, not us, knows how much we can stand, an' when He gets in the good licks on us, He always leaves us with a little stren'th to spare--to last over for the next time. Now, I'm not a bit broke down by what you've told me. I s'pose you thought you'd have me sobbin' on your shoulder--to give you a chanct to play up, an' do the strong-husband act, comfortin' his little tremblin' wife. Well, my lad, if you ain't got on to it by now, that I'm no little, tremblin' wife, you never will. Those kind has nerves. I only got nerve. That's where I'm _singular_, see? A joke, Sammy! I made it up myself. Out of my own head, just now. But to go back to what I was sayin'--why should I sob on your shoulder? There ain't no reason for't. In the first place, even if you _have_ got a spot on your lung, what's a spot! It ain't the whole lung! An' _one_ lung ain't _both_ lungs, an' there you are! As I make it out, even grantin' the worst, you're a lung-an'-then-some to the good, so where's the use gettin' blue? There's always a way out, somehow. If we can't do one way, we'll do another. Now you just cheer up, an' don't let Ma an' the childern see you kinder got a knock-outer in the solar plexus, like Jeffries, an' before you know it, there'll be a suddent turn, an' we'll be atop o' our worries, 'stead o' their bein' atop o'

us. See! Say, just you cast your eye on them loaves! Ain't they grand?

Appearances may be deceitful, but if I do say it as shouldn't, my bread certainly looks elegant this time. Now, Sammy, get busy like a good fella! Go in an' amuse Francie. The poor child is perishin' for somethin' to distrack her. What with Cora an' Sammy at school, an' Miss Claire havin' the Shermans so bewitched, they keep her there all day, an' lucky for us if they leave her come home nights at all, the house is too still for a sick person. Give Francie a drink o' Hygee water to cool her lips, an' tell her a yarn-like. An', Sammy, I wisht you'd be good to yourself, an' have a shave. Them p.r.i.c.kles o' beard reminds me o' the insides o' Mrs. Sherman's big music-box. I wonder what tune you'd play if I run your chin in. Go on, now, an' attend to Francie, like I told you to. She needs to have her mind took off'n herself."

When he was gone, Martha set her loaves aside under cover to rise, never pausing a moment to take breath, before giving the kitchen a "scrub-down" that left no corner or cranny harboring a particle of dust.

It was twilight when she finished, and "time to turn to an' get the dinner."

Cora and Sammy had long since returned from school. Sammy had gone out again to play, and had just come back to find his mother taking her bread-pans from the oven. She regarded them with doleful gaze.

"I fairly broke my own record this time for a b.u.m bread-maker!" she muttered beneath her breath. "This batch is the worst yet."

"Say--mother!" said Sammy.

"Well?"

"Say, mother, may I have a slice of bread? I'm awfully hungry."

"Shoor you may! This here's just fresh from the oven, an' it has currants in it."

"Say, mother, a feller I play with, Joe Eagan, _his_ mother's hands ain't clean. Would you think he'd like to eat the bread she makes?"

"Can she make _good_ bread?"

"I dunno. She give me a piece oncet, but I couldn't eat it, 'count o'

seein' her fingers. I'm glad your hands are so clean, mother. Say, this bread tastes awful good!"

Martha chuckled. "Well, I'm glad you like it. It might be worse, if I do say it! Only," she added to herself, "it'd have a tough time managin'

it."

"Say, mother, may I have another slice with b.u.t.ter on, an' sugar sprinkled on top, like this is, to give it to Joe Eagan? He's downstairs. I want to show him how _my_ mother can make the boss bread!"

"Certainly," said Martha heartily. "By all means, give Joe Eagan a slice. I like to see you thoughtful an' generous, my son. Willin' to share your good things with your friends," and as Sammy bounded out, clutching his treasures, she winked solemnly across at her husband, who had just re-entered.

"Now do you know what'll happen?" she inquired. "Sammy'll always have the notion I make the best bread ever. An' when he grows up an' marries, if his wife is a chef-cook straight out of the toniest kitchen in town, at fifty dollars a month, he'll tell her she ain't a patch on me. An'

he'll say to her: 'Susan, or whatever-her-name-is, them biscuits is all right in their way, but I wisht I had a mouthful o' bread like mother used to make.' An' the poor creature'll wear the life out o' her, tryin'

to please'm, an' reach my top-notch, an' never succeed, an' all the time--Say, Sammy, gather up the rest o' the stuff, like a good fella, an' shove it onto the dumb-waiter, so's it can go down with the sw--There's the whistle now! That's him callin' for the garbage."

CHAPTER XIII

"Hullo, Martha!" said Radcliffe.

Mrs. Slawson bowed profoundly. "Hullo yourself! I ain't had the pleasure of meetin' you for quite some time past, an' yet I notice my absents ain't made no serious alteration for the worst in your appearance. You ain't fell away none, on account of my not bein' here."

"Fell away from what?" asked Radcliffe.

"Fell away from nothin'. That's what they call a figger o' speech. Means you ain't got thin."

"Well, _you've_ got thin, haven't you, Martha? I don't 'member your cheeks had those two long lines in 'em before."

"Lines?" repeated Martha, regarding herself in the mirror of an etagere she was polishing. "Them ain't _lines_. Them's dimples."

Radcliffe scrutinized her critically for a moment. "They're not like Miss Lang's dimples," he observed at last. "Miss Lang's dimples look like when you blow in your milk to cool it--they're there, an' then they ain't there. She vanishes 'em in, an' she vanishes 'em out, but those lines in your face, they just stay. Only they weren't there before, when you were here."

"The secret is, my dimples is the kind that takes longer to vanish 'em out when you once vanished 'em in. Mine's way-train dimples. Miss Lang's is express. But you can take it from me, dimples is faskinatin', whatever specie they are."

"What's _faskinatin'?"_

"It's the thing in some things that, when it ain't in other things, you don't care a thing about 'em."

"Are _you_ faskinatin'?"