It was particularly encouraging to Claire, just at this time, to view Martha in the light of one who did not know the meaning of the word fail, for Mrs. Slawson had assured her that if she would give up all attempt to find employment on her own account, she, Mrs. Slawson, felt she could safely promise to get her “a job that would be satisfacktry all round, only one must be a little pationate.”

But a week, ten days, had gone by, since Martha announced she had an idea, and still the idea had not materialized.  Meanwhile, Claire had ample time to unpack her trunk and settle her belongings about her, so “the pretty lady’s room” took on a look of real comfort, and the children never passed the door without pausing before the threshold, waiting with bated breath for some wonderful chance that would give them a “peek” into the enchanted chamber.  As a matter of fact, the transformation was effected with singularly few “properties.”  Some good photographs tastefully framed in plain, dark wood.  A Baghdad rug left over from her college days, some scraps of charming old textiles, and such few of the precious home trifles as could be safely packed in her trunk.  There was a daguerreotype of her mother, done when she was a girl.  “As old-fashioned as your grandmother’s hoopskirt,” Martha called it.  A sampler wrought by some ancient great-aunt, both aunt and sampler long since yellowed and mellowed by the years.  A della Robbia plaque, with its exquisite swaddled baby holding out eager arms, as if to be taken.  A lacquer casket, a string of Egyptian mummy-beads—­what seemed to the children an inexhaustible stock of wonderful, mysterious treasures.

But the object that appeared to interest their mother more than anything else in the whole collection, was a book of unmounted photographs, snap-shots taken by Claire at college, during her travels abroad, some few, even, here in the city during those first days when she had dreamed it was easy to walk straight into an art-editorship, and no questions asked.

Mrs. Slawson scrutinized the prints with an earnestness so eager that Claire was fairly touched, until she discovered that here was no aching hunger for knowledge, no ungratified yearning “for to admire and for to see, for to be’old this world so wide,” but just what looked like a perfectly feminine curiosity, and nothing more.

“Say, ain’t it a pity you ain’t any real good likeness of you?” Martha deplored.  “These is so aggeravatin’.  They don’t show you up at all.  Just a taste-like, an’ then nothin’ to squench the appetite.”

“That sounds as if I were an entree or something,” laughed Claire.  “But, you see, I don’t want to be shown up, Martha.  I couldn’t abear it, as my friend, Sairy Gamp, would say.  When I was little, my naughty big brother used to tease me dreadfully about my looks.  He invented the most embarrassing nicknames for me; he alluded to my features with every sort of disrespect.