Just that moment, a dim, untraceable association of ideas drew her back until she was face-to-face with a long-forgotten incident in her very-little girlhood.  Once upon a time, there had been a moment when she had experienced much the same sort of feeling she had now—­the feeling of wanting to cry out and run away.  As a matter of fact, she had cried out and run away.  Why, and from what?  As it came back to her, not from anything altogether terrible.  On the contrary, something rather alluring, but so unfamiliar that she had shrunk back from it, protesting, resisting.  What was it?  Claire suddenly broke into a smothered little laugh and covered her face with her hands, before the vision of herself, squawking madly, like a startled chicken, and running away from “big” handsome, twelve-year-old Bobby Van Brandt, who had just announced to the world at large, that “he liked Claire Lang a lot, ‘n’ she was his best girl, ‘n’ he was goin’ to kiss her.”  She had been mortally frightened, had screamed, and run away, but (so unaccountable is the heart of woman) she had never liked Bobby quite so well after that, because he had shown the white feather and hadn’t carried out his purpose, in spite of her.

But if she should scream and run away now, there would be none to pursue.  Her foolish outburst would disturb no one.  She could cry and cry, and run and run, and there would be no big Bobby Van Brandt, or any one else to hear and follow.

An actual echo of the cries she had not uttered seemed to mock her foolish musing.  She paused and listened.  Again and again came the muffled sounds, and, at last, so distinct they seemed, she went to her door, unlatched it, and stood, listening, on the threshold.

From Martha’s room rose a deep rumble, as of a distant murmurous sea.

“Mr. Slawson.  He’s awake.  He must have heard the crying, too.  O, it’s begun again!  How awful!  Martha, what is it, O, what is it?” for Mrs. Slawson had appeared in her own doorway, and was standing, night-robed and ghostly, listening attentively to the intermittent signs of distress.

“It’s that bloomin’ Dutchman, Langbein, acrost the hall.  Every time he goes on a toot, he comes back an’ wallops his wife for it.  Go to bed, Miss Claire, child, an’ don’t let it worry you.  It ain’t your funeral.”

Came the voice of big Sam Slawson from within his chamber: 

“Just what I say to you, my dear.  It ain’t your funeral.  Come back, Martha, an’ go to bed.”

“Well, that’s another pair o’ shoes, entirely, Sammy,” whispered Martha.  “This business has been goin’ on long enough, an’ I ain’t proposin’ to put up with it no longer.  Such a state o’ things has nothin’ to recommend it.  If it’d help such a poor ninny as Mrs. Langbein any to beat her, I’d say, ‘Go ahead!  Never mind us!’ But you couldn’t pound sense inter a softy like her, no matter what you done.  In the first place,