ed anxiously. "I remember distinkly leavin' it soak in the suds,
so's there wouldn't be no strain-like, rubbin' it, an' the dust'd just
drop out natural. But now I come to think of it, I don't recklect
ironin' it. Now honest, did it come outer the wash, Miss Claire?"

"No, Martha--but--"

"There ain't no _but_ about it. I musta gone an' lost your pretty lace
for you, an' it was reel at that!"

"Never mind! It's of no consequence. Truly, please don't--"

"Worry? Shoor I won't worry. What's the use worryin'? But I'll make it
right, you betcher life, which is much more to the purpose. Say, I
shouldn't wonder but it got into the tub someways, an' then, when I let
the water out, the suckage drew it down the pipe. Believe _me,_ that's
the very thing that happened, and--'I'll never see sweet Annie any
more!'"

"It doesn't make a particle of difference, Martha. I never liked that
butterfly as much as you did, you know."

"Perhaps you did an' perhaps you didn't, but all the same you're _out_ a
neck-fixin', an' it's _my_ fault, an' so you're bound to let me get
square, to save my face, Miss Claire. You see how it is, don't you?
Well, last Christmas, Mrs. Granville she give me a lace jabbow--reel
Irish mull an' Carrickmacross (that's lace from the old country, as you
know as well as me). She told me all about it. Fine? It'd break your
heart to think o' one o' them poor innercent colleens over there
pricklin' her eyes out, makin' such grandjer for the like o' me, when no
doubt she thought she was doin' it for some great dame, would be
sportin' it out loud, in her auta on Fifth Avenoo. What use have I, in
my business, for that kinder decoration, I should like to know! It'd
only be distractin' me, gettin' in me pails when I'm scrubbin'. An' by
the time Cora an' Francie is grown up, jabbows will be _out_. I'd much
more use for the five-dollar-bill was folded up in the box alongside.
_That_, now, was becomin' to my peculiar style o' beauty. But the
jabbow! There ain't no use talkin', Miss Claire, you'll have to take it
off'n my hands, I mean my chest, an' then we'll be quits on the
butterfly business, an' no thanks to your nose on either side."

It was useless to protest.

The next morning when Claire started forth to beard the lioness in her
den, she was tricked out in all the bravery of Martha's really beautiful
"jabbow," and looked "as pretty as a picture, an' then some," as Mrs.
Slawson confidentially assured Sam.

But t