ough
alone. If we begin to get the l'yers after us, no tellin' where we'll
end. Who knows but they might find the accident injured the auto, 'stead
o' Francie. If we work hard, an' they give us time, me an' Sammy can,
maybe, make out to pay the doctors. But add to that, to have to buy a
brand-new machine for the fella that run over Francie--that'd be sorter
discouragin'."

She paused, and Claire began to pull on her gloves.

"By the way," said Martha, "how's things down to the Shermans'? Seems
like a hunderd years since I was there. The las' time I laid eyes on
Eliza, she was in excellent spirits--I seen the bottle. I wonder if
she's still--very still, takin' a sly nip on the side, as she calls it,
which means a sly nip off the sideboard. You can take it from me, if she
don't let up, before she knows it she'll be a teetotal wrack."

"I haven't had the pleasure of meeting Eliza," observed Claire, smiling.

"Why, of course, you haven't, which it wouldn't be a pleasure, anyhow.
But what I reely want to know is, how you makin' out with Radcliffe? I
been so took up with Francie all this while, I clean forgot to ask
before. Is he behavin' all right? Does he mind what you say? Does he do
his lessons good?"

Claire's brows drew together in a troubled little frown, as she labored
over the clasp of her glove.

"O, Radcliffe," she let fall carelessly. "Radcliffe's an unruly little
Hessian, of course, but I suppose all boys are mischievous at times."

Martha pondered. "Well, not all boys are mischievous in just the same
way, thank God! This trouble o' Francie's has threw me all out in more
ways than one. If everything had 'a' went as I'd expected, I'd been
workin' at the Shermans' straight along these days, an' you wouldn't 'a'
had a mite o' trouble with the little fella. Him an' I understands each
other perfeckly, an' with me a loomin' up on the landscape, he kinder
sees the sense o' walkin' a chalk-line, not kickin' up his heels too
frisky. I'd calculated on being there, to sorter back you up, till you'd
got uster the place, an' made 'em understand you mean business."

Claire laughed, a quick, sharp little laugh.

"O, I think I'm gradually making them understand I mean business," she
said. "And I'm sure it is better, since I have to be there at all, that
I should be there without you, independent of any help. I couldn't make
Radcliffe respect my authority, if I depended on some one else to
enforce it. It's just one of t