rs. 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'?"

"That's not for me to say," said Martha, feigning coyness. "But this
much I will confess, that some folks which shall be nameless, considers
me so. An' they'd oughter know."

"Is Miss Lang faskinatin'?"

"Ask your Uncle Frank."

"Why must I ask him?"

"If you wanter know."

"Does he know?"

"Prob'ly. He's a very well-informed gen'l-man on most subjecks."

"I do' want to ask my Uncle Frank anything about Miss Lang. Once I asked
him somethin' about her, an' he didn't like it."

"What'd you ask him?"

"I asked him if she wasn't his best girl."

"What'd he say?"

"He said 'No!' quick, just like that--'No!' I guess he was cross with
me, an' I know he didn't like it. When I asked my mother why he didn't
like it, she said because Miss Lang's only my governess. An' when I told
Miss Lang what my mother, she told me, Miss Lang, she didn't like it
either."

"Now, what do you think o' that?" ejaculated Martha. "Nobody didn't seem
to like nothin' in that combination, did they? You was the only one in
the whole outf