“You’ll excuse my interruckting, but before you reely get your steam up, let me have a word on my own account, an’ then, if you want to, you can fire away—­the gun’s your own.  What I mean is—­I don’t believe in lyin’ awake, thinkin’ about the future, when a body can put in good licks o’ sleep, restin’ from the past.  It’s against my principles.  I’m by the day.  I work by the day, an’ I live by the day.  I reasoned it out so-fashion:  the past is over an’ done with, whatever it may be, an’ you can’t change it, for all you can do, so what’s the use?  You can bet on one thing, shoor, whatever ain’t dead waste in your past is, somehow, goin’ to get dished up to you in your present, or your future.  You ain’t goin’ to get rid of it, till you’ve worked it into your system for health, as our dear old friend, Lydia Pinkham, says.  As to the future, the future’s like a flea—­when you can put your finger on the future, it’s time enough to think what you’ll do with it.  Folkes futures’d be all right, if they’d just pin down a little tighter to to-day, an’ make that square up, the best they can, with what they’d oughter do.  Now, as to your future, there’s nothin’ to fret about for a minute in it.  Jus’ now, you’re here, safe an’ sound, an’ here you’re goin’ to stay until you’re well an’ strong an’ fed up, an’ the chill o’ Mrs. Daggett is out o’ your body an’ soul.  You can take it from me, that woman is worse than any line-storm I ever struck for dampenin’-down purposes, an’ freeze-out, an’ generl cussedness.  Your business to-day—­now—­is to get well an’ strong.  Then the future’ll take care of itself.”

“But meanwhile,” Claire persisted, “I’m living on you.  Eating food for which I haven’t the money to pay, having loving care for which I couldn’t pay, if I had all the money in the world.  I guess I know how you settled my account with Mrs. Daggett.  You gave her money you had been saving for the rent, and now you are working, slaving overtime, at four o’clock mornings, sweeping down the stairs, and late nights, making shirtwaists for Mrs. Snyder, to help supply what’s lacking.”

“Just you wait till I see that Cora,” observed Mrs. Slawson irrelevantly.  “That’s the time her past will have slopped over on her present, so’s she can’t tell which is which.  Just you wait till I see that Cora!”

“No, no—­please!  Martha dear!  It wasn’t Cora!  She’s not to blame.  I’d have known sooner or later anyway.  I always reason things out for myself.  Please promise not to scold Cora.”

“Scold Cora?  Not on your life, my dear; I won’t scold Cora.  I’m old-fashioned in my ways with childern.  I don’t believe in scoldin’.  It spoils their tempers, but a good lickin’ oncet in a while, helps ’em to remember, besides bein’ good for the circulation.”

Claire was ready to cry.  “It’s all my fault,” she lamented.  “I was clumsy.  I was tactless.  And now Cora will be punished for it, and—­I make nothing but trouble for you all.”