It made me horribly conscious of myself, a thing no properly-constituted kiddie ought ever to be, of course.  And I’ve never really got over the feeling that I am a ‘sawed-off,’ that my nose is ‘curly,’ and my hair’s a wig, and that the least said about the rest of me, the better.  But if you’d actually like to see something my people at home consider rather good, why, here’s a little tinted photograph I had done for my dear Daddy, the last Christmas he was with us.  He liked it, and that’s the reason I carry it about with me—­because he wore it on his old-fashioned watch-chain.”

She put into Martha’s hand a thin, flat, dull-gold locket.

Mrs. Slawson opened it, and gave a quick gasp of delight—­the sound of triumph escaping one who, having diligently sought, has satisfactorily found.  “Like it!” Martha ejaculated.

Claire deliberated a moment, watching the play of expression on Martha’s mobile face.  “If you like it as much as all that,” she said at last, “I wish you’d take it and keep it.  It seems conceited—­priggish—­to suppose you’d care to own it, but if you really would care to—­”

Mrs. Slawson closed one great, finely-formed, work-hardened fist over the delicate treasure, with a sort of ecstatic grab of appropriation.  “Care to own it!  You betcher life!  There’s nothin’ you could give me I’d care to own better,” she said with honest feeling, then and there tying its slender ribbon about her neck, and slipping the locket inside her dress, as if it had been a precious amulet.

The day following saw her started bright and early for work at the Shermans’.  When she arrived at the area-gate and rang, there was no response, and though she waited a reasonable time, and then rang and rang again, nobody answered the bell.

“They must be up,” she said, settling down to business with a steady thumb on the electric button.  “What ails the bunch o’ them in the kitchen, I should like to know.  It’d be a pity to disturb Eliza.  She might be busy, gettin’ herself an extry cup o’ coffee, an’ couple o’ fried hams-an’-eggs, to break her fast before breakfast.  But that gay young sprig of a kitchen-maid, she might answer the bell an’ open the door to an honest woman.”

The gay young sprig still failing of her duty, and Martha’s patience giving out at last, the honest woman began to tamper with the spring-lock of the iron gate.  For any one else, it would never have yielded, but it opened to Martha’s hand, as with the dull submission of the conquered.

Mrs. Slawson closed the gate after her with care.  “I’ll just step light,” she said to herself, “an’ steal in on ’em unbeknownst, an’ give ’em as good a scare as ever they had in their lives—­the whole lazy lot of ’em.”

But, like Mother Hubbard’s cupboard, the kitchen was bare, and no soul was to be found in the laundry, the pantry or, in fact, anywhere throughout the basement region.  Softly, and with some real misgiving now, Martha made her way upstairs.  Here, for the first time, she distinguished the sound of a human voice breaking the early morning hush of the silent house.  It was Radcliffe’s voice issuing, evidently, from the dining-room, in which imposing apartment he chose to have his breakfast served in solitary grandeur every morning, what time the rest of his family still slept.