The pretty lady, sitting up among her pillows, awake and alert, almost brought disaster upon the taper, and the tray, by exclaiming brightly, "Good-evening! I'm wide awake for good! You needn't tiptoe or hush any more. O, I feel like new! All rested and well and--_ready_ again. And I owe it, every bit, to you! You've been so _good_ to me!"

It was hard on Cora to have to obey her mother's injunction to "clear out," just when the pretty lady was beginning to demonstrate her right to the t.i.tle. But Martha's word in her little household was not to be disputed with impunity, and Cora slipped away reluctantly, carrying with her a dazzling vision of soft, dark hair, starry blue-gray eyes, wonderful changing expressions, and, in and over all, a smile that was like a key to unlock hearts.

"My, but it's good to see you so!" said Mrs. Slawson heartily. "I was glad to have you sleep, for goodness knows you needed it, but if you'd 'a' kep' it up a day or so longer, I'd 'a' called in a doctor--shoor!

Just as a kind of nacherl percaution, against your settlin' down to a permanent sleepin'-beauty ack, for, you can take it from me, I haven't the business address of any Beast, here in New York City, could be counted on to do the Prince-turn, when needed. There's plenty of beasts, worse luck! but they're on the job, for fair. No magic, lightenin'-change about _them_. They stay beasts straight through the performance."

Claire laughed.

"But, as it happened, I didn't need a Prince, did I? I didn't need a Prince or any one else, for I had a good fairy G.o.dmother who--O, Mrs.

Slawson, I--I--can't--"

"You don't have to. An' I'm not Mrs. Slawson to you. I'm just Martha, for I feel like you was my own young lady, an' if you call me Mrs.

Slawson, I won't feel so, an' here--now--see if you can clear up this tray so clean it'll seem silly to wash the dishes."

For a moment there was silence in the little room, while Claire tried to compose herself, and Martha pretended to be busy with the tray. Then Claire said, "I'll be very glad to call you Martha if you'll let me, and there's something I'd like to say right off, because I've been lying here quite a while thinking about it, and it's very important, indeed.

It's about my future, and--"

"You'll excuse my interruckting, but before you reely get your steam up, let me have a word on my own account, an' then, if you want to, you can fire away--the gun's your own. What I mean _is_--I don't believe in lyin' awake, thinkin' about the future, when a body can put in good licks o' sleep, restin' from the past. It's against my principles. I'm by the day. I work by the day, an' I live by the day. I reasoned it out so-fashion: the past is over an' done with, whatever it may be, an' you can't change it, for all you can do, so what's the use? You can bet on one thing, shoor, whatever ain't dead waste in your past is, somehow, goin' to get dished up to you in your present, or your future. You ain't goin' to get rid of it, till you've worked it into your system _for health_, as our dear old friend, Lydia Pinkham, says. As to the future, the future's like a flea--when you can put your finger on the future, it's time enough to think what you'll do with it. Folkes futures'd be all right, if they'd just pin down a little tighter to _to-day_, an'

make that square up, the best they can, with what they'd oughter do.

Now, as to _your_ future, there's nothin' to fret about for a minute in it. Jus' now, you're here, safe an' sound, an' here you're goin' to stay until you're well an' strong an' fed up, an' the chill o' Mrs. Daggett is out o' your body an' soul. You can take it from me, that woman is worse than any line-storm _I_ ever struck for dampenin'-down purposes, an' freeze-out, an' generl cussedness. Your business to-day--now--is to get well an' strong. Then the future'll take care of itself."

"But meanwhile," Claire persisted, "I'm living on you. Eating food for which I haven't the money to pay, having loving care for which I couldn't pay, if I had all the money in the world. I guess I know how you settled my account with Mrs. Daggett. You gave her money you had been saving for the rent, and now you are working, slaving overtime, at four o'clock mornings, sweeping down the stairs, and late nights, making shirtwaists for Mrs. Snyder, to help supply what's lacking."

"Just you wait till I see that Cora," observed Mrs. Slawson irrelevantly. "That's the time _her_ past will have slopped over on her present, so's she can't tell which is which. Just you wait till I see that Cora!"

"No, no--_please_! Martha _dear_! It wasn't Cora! She's not to blame.

I'd have known sooner or later anyway. I always reason things out for myself. Please promise not to scold Cora."

"Scold Cora? Not on your life, my dear; I won't scold Cora. I'm old-fashioned in my ways with childern. I don't believe in scoldin'. It spoils their tempers, but a good _lickin'_ oncet in a while, helps 'em to remember, besides bein' good for the circulation."

Claire was ready to cry. "It's all my fault," she lamented. "I was clumsy. I was tactless. And now Cora will be punished for it, and--I make nothing but trouble for you all."

"There, there! For mercy sake, don't take on like that. I promise I'll let Cora go free, if you'll sit back quiet an' eat your dinner in peace.

So now! That's better!"

"What I was going to say, Martha dear, is, I'm quite well and strong now, and I want to set about immediately looking for something to do. I ought to be able to support myself, you know, for I'm able-bodied, and not so stupid but that I managed to graduate from college. Once, two summers ago, I tutored--I taught a young girl who was studying to take the Wellesley entrance exams. And I coached her so well she went through without a condition, and she wasn't very quick, either. I wonder if I couldn't teach?"

"Shoor, you could!"

"If I could get a position to teach in some school or some family, I could, maybe, live here with you--rent this room--unless you have some other use for it."

"Lord, no! I _call_ it the boarder's room because this flat is really too rich for my blood, but you see I don't want the childern brought up in a bad neighborhood with low companions. Well, Sammy argued the rent was too high, till I told'm we'd let a room an' make it up that way, but what with this, an' what with that, we ain't had any boarders exceptin' now an' then some friend of himself out of a job, or one o'

the girls, livin' out in the houses where I work, gettin' bounced suddent, an' in want of a bed, an' none of 'em ever paid us a cent or was asked for it."

"Well, if I could get a position as teacher or governess, I'd soon be able to pay back what you've laid out for me, and more besides, and--In the houses where you work, are there any children who need a governess?

Any young girls who need a tutor? That's what I wanted to ask you, Martha."

Mrs. Slawson deliberated in silence for a moment.

"There's the Livingstons," she mused, "but they ain't any childern. Only a childish brother-in-law. He's not quite _all there,_ as you might say.

It'd be no use tryin' to learn him nothin', seein' he's so odd--seventy-odd--an' his habits like to be fixed. Then, there's the Farrands. But the girls goes to Miss Spenny's school, an' the son's at Columbia. It might upset their plans, if I was to suggest their givin'

up where they're at, an' havin' you. Then there's the Grays, an' the Granvilles, an' the Thornes. Addin' 'em all together for childern, they'd come to about half a child a pair. Talk about your race suicide!

They say they 'can't afford to have childern.' You can take it from me, it's the poor people are rich nowadays. _We_ can afford to have childern, all right, all right. Then there's Mrs. Sherman--She's got one boy, but he--Radcliffe Sherman--well, he's a limb! A reg'lar young villain. You couldn't manage _him_. Only Lord Ronald can manage Radcliffe Sherman, an' he--"

"Lord Ronald?" questioned Claire, when Mrs. Slawson's meditation threatened to become static.

"Why, he's Mrs. Sherman's brother, Mr. Frank Ronald, an' no real lord could be handsomer-lookin', or grander-behavin', or richer than him.

Mrs. Sherman is a widder, or a divorcy, or somethin' stylish like that.

Anyhow, I worked for her this eight years an' more--almost ever since Radcliffe was born, an' I ain't seen hide nor hair o' any Mr. Sherman yet, an' they never speak o' him, so I guess he was either too good or too bad to mention. Mr. Frank an' his mother lives with Mrs. Sherman, an' what Mr. Frank says _goes_. His word is law. She thinks the world of'm, an' well she may, for he's a th.o.r.erbred. The way he treats me, for instants. You'd think I was the grandest lady in the land. He never sees me but it's, 'How d'do, Martha?' or, 'How's the childern an' Mr. Slawson these days?' He certainly has got grand ways with'm, Mr. Frank has. An'

yet, he's never free. You wouldn't dare make bold with'm. His eyes has a sort o' _keep-off-the-gra.s.s_ look gener'ly, but when he smiles down at you, friendly-like, why, you wouldn't call the queen your cousin.

Radcliffe knows he can't monkey with his uncle Frank, an' when he's by, b.u.t.ter wouldn't melt in that young un's mouth. But other times--my! You see, Mrs. Sherman is dead easy. She told me oncet, childern ought to be brought up 'scientifically.' Lord! She said they'd ought to be let _express their souls_, whatever she means by that. I told her I thought it was safer not to trust too much to the childern's souls, but to help along some occasional with your own--the sole of your slipper. It was then she said she 'abserlootly forbid' any one to touch Radcliffe. She wanted him 'guided by love alone.' Well, that's what he's been guided with, an', you can take it from me, love's made a hash of it, as it ushally does when it ain't mixed with a little common sense. You'd oughta see that fella's anticks when his mother, an' Lord Ronald, ain't by. He'd raise the hair offn your head, if you hadn't a spear of it there to begin with. He speaks to the help as if they was dirt under his feet, an' he'd as lief lie as look at you, an' always up to some new devilment. It'd take your time to think fast enough to keep up with'm.

But he ain't all bad--I don't believe no child _is_, not on your life, an' my idea is, he'd turn out O.K. if only he'd the right sort o'

handlin'. Mr. Frank could do it--but when Lord Ronald is by, Radcliffe is a pet lamb--a little woolly wonder. You ast me why I call Mr. Frank Lord Ronald. I never thought of it till one time when Cora said a piece at a Sund'-School ent'tainment. I can't tell you what the piece was, for, to be perfectly honest, I was too took up, at the time, watchin'

Cora's stockin', which was comin' down, right before the whole churchful. It reely didn't, but I seen the garter hangin', an' I thought it would, any minute. I remember it was somethin' about a fella called Lord Ronald, who was a reel th.o.r.erbred, just like Mr. Frank is. I recklect one of the verses went:

"'Lord Ronald had the lily-white dough--'

(to my way o' thinkin' it's no matter about the color, white or gold or just plain, green paper-money, so long's you've _got_ it), anyhow, that's what it said in the piece--

"'Lord Ronald had the lily-white dough, Which he gave to his cousin, Lady Clare.'

Say, wasn't he generous?--'give to his cousin--Lady Clare'--an'--good gracious! O, excuse me! I didn't mean to jolt your tray like that, but I just couldn't help flyin' up, for I got an idea! True as you live, I got an idea!"

CHAPTER IV

It did not take long, once Claire was fairly on her feet again, to adjust herself to her new surroundings, to find her place and part in the social economy of the little family-group where she was never for a moment made to feel an alien. She appropriated a share in the work of the household at once, insisting, to Martha's dismay, upon lending a hand mornings with the older children, who were to be got off to school, and with the three-year-old Sabina, who was to stay at home. She a.s.sisted with the breakfast preparations, and then, when the busy swarm had flown for the day, she "turned to," to Ma's delight, and got the place "rid up" so it was "clean as a whistle an' neat as a pin."

Ma was not what Martha approvingly called "a hustler."

"Ma ain't th.o.r.er," her daughter-in-law confided to Claire, without reproach. "She means well, but, as she says, her mind ain't fixed on things below, an' when that's the case, the dirt is bound to settle. Ma thinks you can run a fam'ly, readin' the Bible an' singin' hymns. Well, p'raps you can, only I ain't never dared try. When I married Sammy he looked dretful peaky, the fack bein' he hadn't never been properly fed, an' it's took me all of the goin'-on fifteen years now, we been livin'

together, to get'm filled up accordin' to his appet.i.te, which is heavy.

You see, Ma never had any time to attend to such earthly matters as cookin' a square meal--but she's settin' out to have a lot of leisure with the Lord."

As for Ma, she found it pleasant to watch, from a comfortable distance, the work progressing satisfactorily, without any draft on her own energies.

"Martha's a good woman, miss," she observed judicially, in her detached manner, "but she is like the lady of her name we read about in the blessed Book. When _I_ set out in life, I chose the betther part, an'

now I'm old, I have the faith to believe I'll have a front seat in heaven. I've knew throuble in me day. I raised ten childern, an' I had three felons, an' G.o.d knows I think I earned a front seat in heaven."

Claire's pause, before she spoke, seemed to Ma to indicate she was giving the subject the weighty consideration it deserved.

"According to that, it would certainly seem so. You have rheumatism, too, haven't you?" as if that might be regarded as an added guarantee of special celestial reservation.

Ma paled visibly. "No, miss. I don't never have the rheumatiz now--not so you'd notice it," she said plaintively. "Oncet I'd it thurrbl, an' me son Sammy had it, too, loikewoise, fierce. I'd uster lay in bed moanin'

an' cryin' till you'd be surprised, an' me son Sammy, he was a'most as bad. Well, for a week or two, Martha, she done for us the best she cud, I s'pose, but she didn't make for to stop the pain, an' at last one night, when me son Sammy was gruntin', an' I was groanin' to beat the band, Martha, she up, all of a suddint, an' says she, she was goin' for to cure us of the rheumatiz, or know the reason why. An' she went, an'