“What you been doin’ in the Principal’s office, miss, I should like to know?  Been sent up to her for bad behavior, or not knowin’ your lessons?  Speak up now!  Quick!”

“My teacher, she sends me on errands, an’ I got a credit-card last week an’, say, mother, I don’t believe you’re a young lady stenographer an’ typewriter.  You’re just trying to fool me.”

“Well, Miss Smarty, supposin’ I am.  So long’s I don’t succeed you’ve no kick comin’.”

“Say, now listen, mother.”

“Hush!  You’ll wake the pretty lady.  Besides, too many questions before dinner is apt to spoil the appetite, to say nothin’ of the temper.  Turn to, an’ lend a hand with them potatoes.  Smash ’em good first, an’ then beat ’em with a fork until they’re light an’ creamy, an’ you won’t have so much gimp left for snoopin’ into things that don’t concern you!”

“Say, now listen, mother!”

“Well?”

“Say, mother, something awful funny happened to me last night?”

“Are you tellin’ what it was?”

“Something woke me up in the middle of the night, ‘n’ I got up out of bed, an’ the clock struck four, ‘n’ then I knew it was mornin’.  ‘N’ I heard a noise, ‘n’ I thought it was robbers, ‘n’ I went to the door, ‘n’ it was open, ‘n’ I went out into the hall, ’n’—­”

“Well?”

“An’ there was you, mother, on the stairs—­kneelin’!”

“Guess you had a dream, didn’t you?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“What’d I be kneelin’ on the stairs for, at four o’clock in the mornin’, I should like to know?”

“It looked like you was brushin’ ’em down.”

“Me brushin’ down Snyder’s stairs!  Well, now what do you think o’ that?” Her tone of amazement, at the mere possibility, struck Cora, and there was a pause, broken at length by Martha, in a preternaturally solemn voice.  “I s’pose you never tumbled to it I might be prayin’.”

Cora’s eyes grew wide.  “Prayin’!” she repeated in an awed whisper.  “But, mother, what’d you want to go out in the hall for, to pray on the stairs, at four o’clock in the mornin’?”

“Prayin’ is a godly ack.  Wheresomedever, an’ whensomedever you do it.”

“But, mother, I don’t believe you were prayin’.  I heard the knockin’ o’ your whis’-broom.  You was brushin’ down the stairs.”

“Well, what if I was?  Cleanliness is next to godliness, ain’t it?  Prayin’ an’ cleanin’, it amounts to the same thing in the end—­it’s just a question of what you clean, outside you or in.”

“But say, now, listen, mother, you never cleaned down Mr. Snyder’s stairs before.  An’ you been making shirtwaists for Mrs. Snyder, after you get home nights.  I saw her with one of ’em on.”

“Cora, do you know what happened to a little girl oncet who asked too many questions?”

“No.”

“Well, I won’t tell you now.  It might spoil your appetite for dinner.  But you can take it from me, the end she met with would surprise you.”