ture, was rather upset in her calculations.

"You look like you _relish_ bein' bounced," she observed tartly.

"Well, if I'm goin' to get my walkin'-papers, I'd rather get 'em from
Mr. Frank than from anybody else. There's never any great loss without
some small gain. At least, if Mr. Frank is dischargin' me, he's noticin'
I'm alive, an' that's somethin' to be thankful for."

"That's _as_ you look at it!" snapped Eliza. "Mr. Frank is all right
enough, but I must say I'd rather keep my place than have even him kick
me out. An' you look as if his sendin' for you was to say you'd come in
for a fortune."

"P'raps it is," said Martha. "You never can tell."

"Well, if _I_ was makin' tracks for fortunes, I wouldn't start in on Mr.
Frank Ronald," Eliza observed cuttingly.

"Which might be exackly where you'd slip up on it," Martha returned with
a bland smile.

And yet, in reality, she was by no means so composed as she appeared.
She felt as might one who, moved by a great purpose, had rashly usurped
the prerogative of fate and set in motion mighty forces that, if they
did not make for success, might easily make for disaster. She had very
definitely stuck her thumb into somebody else's pie, and if her laudable
intention was to draw forth a plum, not for herself but for the other,
why, that was no proof that, in the end, she might not get smartly
scorched for her pains.

When the summons to the dining-room actually came, Martha felt such an
unsubstantiality in the region of her knee-joints, that for a moment she
almost believed the bones had turned into breadcrumbs. Then
energetically she shook herself into shape, spurning her momentary
weakness from her, with an almost visible gesture, and marched forward
to meet what awaited her.

Shaw had removed the breakfast dishes from the table beside which "Lord
Ronald" sat alone. It was all very imposing, the place, the particular
purpose for which she had been summoned, and which was, as yet,
unrevealed to her, the _person_, most of all.

Martha thought that perhaps she had been a little hard on Cora, "the
time she give her the tongue-lashin' for stumblin' over the first lines
of her piece, that evenin' of the Sund'-School ent'tainment. It wasn't
so dead easy as a body might think, to stand up to a whole churchful o'
people, or even one person, when he was the kind that's as good (or as
bad) as a whole churchful."

Martha could see her now, as she stood then, announcing to