CHAPTER III

For days Claire lay in a state of drowsy quiet.

She hardly realized the fact of her changed condition, that she was being cared for, ministered to, looked after.  She had brief, waking moments when she seemed to be aware that Martha was bringing in her breakfast, or sitting beside her while she ate her dinner, but the intervening spaces, when “Ma” or Cora served, were dim, indistinct adumbrations of no more substantial quality than the vagrant dreams that ranged mistily across her relaxed brain.

The thin walls of the cheaply-built flat did not protect her from the noise of the children’s prattling tongues and boisterous laughter, but the walls of her consciousness closed her about, as in a muffled security, and she slept on and on, until the exhausted body was reinforced, the overtaxed nerves infused with new strength.

Then, one evening, when the room in which she lay was dusky with twilight shadows, she realized that she was awake, that she was alive.  She had gradually groped her way through the dim stretches lying between the region of visions and that of the actual, but the step into a full sense of reality was abrupt.  She heard the sound of children’s voices in the next room.  So clear they were, she could distinguish every syllable.

“Say, now, listen, mother!  What do you do when you go out working every day?” It was Cora speaking.

“I work.”

“Pooh, you know what I mean.  What kinder work do you do?”

For a moment there was no answer, then Claire recognized Martha’s voice, with what was, undeniably, a chuckle tucked away in its mellow depths, where no mere, literal child would be apt to discern it.

“Stenography an’ typewritin’!”

“Are you a stenographer an’ typewriter, mother?  Honest?”

“Well, you can take it from me, if I was it at all, I’d be it honest.  What makes you think there’s any doubt o’ my being one?  Don’t I have the appearance of a high-toned young lady stenographer an’ typewriter?”

A pause, in which Martha’s substantial steps were to be heard busily passing to and fro, as she went about her work.  Her mother’s reply evidently did not carry conviction to Cora’s questioning mind, for a second later she was up and at it afresh.

“Say, now, listen, mother—­if you do stenography an’ typewritin’, what makes your apron so wet an’ dirty, nights when you come home?”

“Don’t you s’pose I clean my machine before I leave?  What kinder typewriter d’you think I am?  To leave my machine dirty, when a good scrub-down, with a pail o’ hot water, an’ a stiff brush, an’ Sapolio, would put it in fine shape for the next mornin’.”

“Mother—­say, now, listen!  I don’t believe that’s the way they clean typewriters.  Miss Symonds, she’s the Principal’s seckerterry to our school, an’ she sits in the office, she cleans her machine with oil and a little fine brush, like you clean your teeth with.”