“Who won out?”

“I did, but it took me all day.”

“Never mind.  It’d been cheap at the price, if it had ‘a’ took you all week.  How come the madam to give you a free hand?”

“She was away.”

“Anybody else know what was goin’ on?  Any of the fam’ly?”

“Yes, Mr. Ronald.  He brought me home.  I didn’t want him to, but he did.  He just made me let him, and—­O, Martha—­I can’t bear—­I can’t bear—­”

“You mean you can’t bear him?"

Claire nodded, choking back her tears.

“Now, what do you think o’ that!” ejaculated Mrs. Slawson pensively.  “An’ he so pop’lar with the ladies!  Why, you’d oughter hear them stylish lady-friends o’ Mrs. Sherman praisin’ ’m to her face.  It’d make you blush for their modesty, which they don’t seem to have none, an’ that’s a fac’.  You can take it from me, you’re the only one he ever come in contract with, has such a hate on’m.  I wouldn’t ‘a’ believed it, unless I’d ‘a’ had it from off of your own lips.  But there’s no use tryin’ to argue such things.  Taste is different.  What pleases one, pizens another.  In the mean time—­an’ it is a mean time for you, you poor, wore-out child—­I’ve some things here, hot an’ tasty, that’ll encourage your stummick, no matter how it’s turned on some other things.  As I says to Sammy, it’s a poor stummick won’t warm its own bit, but all the same, there’s times when somethin’ steamin’ does your heart as much good as it does your stummick, which, the two o’ them bein’ such near neighbors, no wonder we get ’em mixed up sometimes, an’ think the one is starved when it’s only the other.”

CHAPTER XII

It proved altogether easier for Martha, now Francie was at home again.

“You see, I can tend her an’ sandwich in some work besides,” Mrs. Slawson explained cheerfully.  “An’ Ma’s a whizz at settin’ by bedsides helpin’ patients get up their appetites.  Says she, ’Now drink this nice glass o’ egg-nog, Francie, me child,’ she says.  ‘An’ if you’ll drink it, I’ll take one just like it meself.’  An’ true for you, she does.  The goodness o’ Ma is astonishin’.”

Then one day Sam Slawson came home with a tragic face.

“I’ve lost my job, Martha!” he stated baldly.

For a moment his wife stood silent under the blow, and all it entailed.  Then, with an almost imperceptible squaring of her broad shoulders, she braced herself to meet it, as she herself would say, like a soldier.  “Well, it’s kinder hard on you, lad,” she answered.  “But there’s no use grievin’.  If it had to happen, it couldn’t ‘a’ happened at a better time, for you bein’ home, an’ able to look after Francie, will give me a chance to go out reg’lar to my work again.  An’ before you know it, Francie, she’ll be running about as good as new, an’ you’ll have another job, an’ we’ll be on the top o’ the wave.  Here’s