ike it as much as all that," she said at last, "I
wish you'd take it and keep it. It seems conceited--priggish--to suppose
you'd care to own it, but if you really _would_ care to--"

Mrs. Slawson closed one great, finely-formed, work-hardened fist over
the delicate treasure, with a sort of ecstatic grab of appropriation.
"Care to own it! You betcher life! There's nothin' you could give me I'd
care to own better," she said with honest feeling, then and there tying
its slender ribbon about her neck, and slipping the locket inside her
dress, as if it had been a precious amulet.

The day following saw her started bright and early for work at the
Shermans'. When she arrived at the area-gate and rang, there was no
response, and though she waited a reasonable time, and then rang and
rang again, nobody answered the bell.

"They must be up," she said, settling down to business with a steady
thumb on the electric button. "What ails the bunch o' them in the
kitchen, I should like to know. It'd be a pity to disturb Eliza. She
might be busy, gettin' herself an extry cup o' coffee, an' couple o'
fried hams-an'-eggs, to break her fast before breakfast. But that gay
young sprig of a kitchen-maid, _she_ might answer the bell an' open the
door to an honest woman."

The _gay young sprig_ still failing of her duty, and Martha's patience
giving out at last, the _honest woman_ began to tamper with the
spring-lock of the iron gate. For any one else, it would never have
yielded, but it opened to Martha's hand, as with the dull submission of
the conquered.

Mrs. Slawson closed the gate after her with care. "I'll just step
light," she said to herself, "an' steal in on 'em unbeknownst, an' give
'em as good a scare as ever they had in their lives--the whole lazy lot
of 'em."

But, like Mother Hubbard's cupboard, the kitchen was bare, and no soul
was to be found in the laundry, the pantry or, in fact, anywhere
throughout the basement region. Softly, and with some real misgiving
now, Martha made her way upstairs. Here, for the first time, she
distinguished the sound of a human voice breaking the early morning hush
of the silent house. It was Radcliffe's voice issuing, evidently, from
the dining-room, in which imposing apartment he chose to have his
breakfast served in solitary grandeur every morning, what time the rest
of his family still slept.

Martha, pausing on her way up, peeped around the edge of the half-closed
door, and then stopped