can take it from me, you only pester folks
by gettin' 'm down where they can't resist you, an' forcin' a lot of
hard facks down their throats, which ain't the _truth_ anyhow, an' which
they don't want to swaller on no account. What do they care about the
machinery, so long as it turns out the thing they want? Believe _me_,
it's foolishness to try to get 'em back into the works, pokin' about
among the inside wheels an' springs, an' so forth. You likely get
knocked senseless by some big thing-um-bob you didn't know was there.
Now I know just eggsackly what's in your mind, but you're wrong. You
think I told Mr. Ronald fibs. I didn't tell'm fibs. I just give'm the
truth the way he'd take it, like you give people castor-oil that's too
dainty to gullup it down straight. Some likes it in lemon, an' some
in grobyules, but it's castor-oil all the same. He wanted to know the
truth about you, an' I let him have it, the truth bein' you're as fine
a lady as any in the land. If I'd happened to live in Grand Rapids at
the time, I'd most likely of lived out with your grandmother, an' been
an old family servant in your house like I was at Mrs. Granville's,
an' I certainly would of nursed you if I'd had the chanct. It was just
a case o' happenso, my _not_ havin' it. The right kind o' folks here
in New York is mighty squeamish about strangers. They want
recommendations--they want 'em because they want to be sure the ones
they engage is O.K. That's all recommendations is for, ain't it? Now I
knew the minit I clapped eye to you, that, as I say, you was as grand a
lady as any in the land, an' that bein' the case, what was the use o'
frettin' because I hadn't more than your sayso to prove it. But if I'd
pulled a long face to Mrs. Sherman, an' told her, hesitatin'-like an'
nervous, about--well, about what took place that night, she, not havin'
much experience of human nature (only the other kind that's more common
here in New York City), she'd have hemmed, an' hawed, an' thought she'd
better not try it, seein' Radcliffe is such an angel-child an' not to be
trained except by a A-I Lady."

"But the truth," persisted Claire.

"I tell the truth," Mrs. Slawson returned with quiet dignity. "I only
don't waste time on trifles."

"It is not wasting time on trifles to be exact and accurate. An
architect planning a house must make every little detail _true_, else
when the house goes up, it won't stand."

"Don't he have to reckon nothin' on the _giv