“‘Lord Ronald had the lily-white dough—­’

(to my way o’ thinkin’ it’s no matter about the color, white or gold or just plain, green paper-money, so long’s you’ve got it), anyhow, that’s what it said in the piece—­

“’Lord Ronald had the lily-white dough,
Which he gave to his cousin, Lady Clare.’

Say, wasn’t he generous?—­’give to his cousin—­Lady Clare’—­an’—­good gracious!  O, excuse me!  I didn’t mean to jolt your tray like that, but I just couldn’t help flyin’ up, for I got an idea!  True as you live, I got an idea!”

CHAPTER IV

It did not take long, once Claire was fairly on her feet again, to adjust herself to her new surroundings, to find her place and part in the social economy of the little family-group where she was never for a moment made to feel an alien.  She appropriated a share in the work of the household at once, insisting, to Martha’s dismay, upon lending a hand mornings with the older children, who were to be got off to school, and with the three-year-old Sabina, who was to stay at home.  She assisted with the breakfast preparations, and then, when the busy swarm had flown for the day, she “turned to,” to Ma’s delight, and got the place “rid up” so it was “clean as a whistle an’ neat as a pin.”

Ma was not what Martha approvingly called “a hustler.”

“Ma ain’t thorer,” her daughter-in-law confided to Claire, without reproach.  “She means well, but, as she says, her mind ain’t fixed on things below, an’ when that’s the case, the dirt is bound to settle.  Ma thinks you can run a fam’ly, readin’ the Bible an’ singin’ hymns.  Well, p’raps you can, only I ain’t never dared try.  When I married Sammy he looked dretful peaky, the fack bein’ he hadn’t never been properly fed, an’ it’s took me all of the goin’-on fifteen years now, we been livin’ together, to get’m filled up accordin’ to his appetite, which is heavy.  You see, Ma never had any time to attend to such earthly matters as cookin’ a square meal—­but she’s settin’ out to have a lot of leisure with the Lord.”

As for Ma, she found it pleasant to watch, from a comfortable distance, the work progressing satisfactorily, without any draft on her own energies.

“Martha’s a good woman, miss,” she observed judicially, in her detached manner, “but she is like the lady of her name we read about in the blessed Book.  When I set out in life, I chose the betther part, an’ now I’m old, I have the faith to believe I’ll have a front seat in heaven.  I’ve knew throuble in me day.  I raised ten childern, an’ I had three felons, an’ God knows I think I earned a front seat in heaven.”

Claire’s pause, before she spoke, seemed to Ma to indicate she was giving the subject the weighty consideration it deserved.

“According to that, it would certainly seem so.  You have rheumatism, too, haven’t you?” as if that might be regarded as an added guarantee of special celestial reservation.