Martha had tried, in a sort of casual, matter-of-course way, to prepare her little lady for the trial, by dropping hints every now and then, as to the best methods of dealing with employers—­the proper way to carry oneself, when one “went to live out in private fam’lies.”

“You see, you always been the private fam’ly yourself, Miss Claire, so it’ll come kinder strange to you first-off, to look at things the other way.  But it won’t be so bad after you oncet get used to it.  There’s one thing it’s good to remember.  Them high-toned folks has somehow got it fixed in their minds that the rich must not be annoyed, so it’ll be money in your pocket, as the sayin’ is, if you can do your little stunt without makin’ any fuss about it, or drawin’ their attention.  Just saw wood an’ say nothin’, as my husband says.

“Mrs. Sherman she told me, when I first went there, an’ Radcliffe was a little baby, she ‘strickly forbid anybody to touch’m.’  It was on account o’ what she called germs or somethin’.  Well, I never had no particular yearnin’ to inflect him with none o’ my germs, but when she was off gallivantin’, an’ that poor little lonesome fella used to cry, an’ put out his arms to be took, I’d take’m, an’ give’m the only reel mother-huggin’ he ever had in his life, an’ no harm to any of us—­to me that give it, or him that got it, or her that was no wiser.  Then, later, when he was four or five, an’ around that, she got a notion he was a angel-child, an’ she’d useter go about tellin’ the help, an’ other folks, ‘he must be guided by love alone.’  I remember she said oncet he’d be ’as good as a kitten for hours at a time if you only give’m a ball of twine to play with.’  Well, his nurse, she give’m the ball of twine one day when she had somethin’ doin’ that took up all her time an’ attention on her own account, an’ when she come back from her outin’, you couldn’t walk a step in the house without breakin’ your leg (the nurse she did sprain her ankle), on account o’ the cat’s-cradle effect the young villain had strung acrost the halls, an’ from one doorknob to the other, so there wasn’t an inch o’ the place free.  An’ he’d got the tooth-paste toobs, an’ squoze out the insides, an’ painted over every bit o’ mahogany he could find—­doors, an’ furnitur’, an’ all.  You can take it from me, that house was a sight after the angel-child got through with it.  The girls an’ me—­the whole push—­was workin’ like mad clearin’ up after’m before the madam’d come home, an’ the nurse cryin’ her eyes out for the pain, an’ scared stiff ‘less she’d be sent packin’.  Also, ’if Radcliffe asked questions, we was to answer them truthful,’ was another rule.  An’ the puzzles he’d put to you!  One day, I remember, he got me cornered with a bunch that was such fierce propositions, Solomon in all his glory couldn’t ‘a’ give him their truthful answers.  Says he—­Radcliffe, not Solomon—­says he:  ‘I want another leg.’

“‘You can’t have it,’ says I.