“I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Eliza,” observed Claire, smiling.

“Why, of course, you haven’t, which it wouldn’t be a pleasure, anyhow.  But what I reely want to know is, how you makin’ out with Radcliffe?  I been so took up with Francie all this while, I clean forgot to ask before.  Is he behavin’ all right?  Does he mind what you say?  Does he do his lessons good?”

Claire’s brows drew together in a troubled little frown, as she labored over the clasp of her glove.

“O, Radcliffe,” she let fall carelessly.  “Radcliffe’s an unruly little Hessian, of course, but I suppose all boys are mischievous at times.”

Martha pondered.  “Well, not all boys are mischievous in just the same way, thank God!  This trouble o’ Francie’s has threw me all out in more ways than one.  If everything had ‘a’ went as I’d expected, I’d been workin’ at the Shermans’ straight along these days, an’ you wouldn’t ‘a’ had a mite o’ trouble with the little fella.  Him an’ I understands each other perfeckly, an’ with me a loomin’ up on the landscape, he kinder sees the sense o’ walkin’ a chalk-line, not kickin’ up his heels too frisky.  I’d calculated on being there, to sorter back you up, till you’d got uster the place, an’ made ’em understand you mean business.”

Claire laughed, a quick, sharp little laugh.

“O, I think I’m gradually making them understand I mean business,” she said.  “And I’m sure it is better, since I have to be there at all, that I should be there without you, independent of any help.  I couldn’t make Radcliffe respect my authority, if I depended on some one else to enforce it.  It’s just one of those cases where one has to fight one’s own battle alone.”

“Then it is a battle?” Martha inquired quietly.

“O, it’s a battle, ‘all right,’” laughed Claire mirthlessly, and before Mrs. Slawson could probe her further, she managed to make her escape.

She did not wish to burden Martha with her vexations.  Martha had troubles of her own.  Moreover, those that were most worrisome to Claire, Martha, in the very nature of things, would not understand.

Claire’s first few weeks at the Shermans’ had been uneventful enough.  Radcliffe had found amusement in the novelty of the situation, had deigned to play school with her, and permitted her to “make believe” she was “the teacher.”  He was willing to “pretend” to be her “scholar,” just as he would have been willing to pretend to be the horse, if he and another boy had been playing, and the other boy had chosen to be driver for a while.  But turn about is fair play, and when the days passed, and Claire showed no sign of relinquishing her claim, he grew restless, mutinous, and she had all she could do to keep him in order.