While she sat there, Clam came in, now one of the smartest of gay-turbaned handmaidens, and began an elaborate dusting of the apartment.  She began at the door, and by the time she had worked round to Elizabeth at the window, she had made by many times a more careful survey of her mistress than of any piece of furniture in the room.  Elizabeth’s head had drooped; and her eyes were looking, not vacantly, but with no object in view, out of the window.

“I guess you want my friend here just now, Miss ’Lizabeth,” said Clam, her lips parting just enough to show the line of white between them.

“Whom do you mean by your friend?”

“O —­ Governor Landholm, to be sure —­ he used to fix everybody straight whenever he come home to Wuttle Quttle.”

Elizabeth passed over the implication that she wanted ‘fixing,’ and asked, “How? —­”

“I don’ know.  He used to put ’em all in order, in less’n no time,” said Clam, going over and over the dressing-table with her duster, as that piece of furniture kept her near her mistress.  “Mis’ Landholm used to get her face straight the minute his two feet sounded outside the house, and she’d keep it up as long as he stayed; and Winifred stopped to be queer and behaved like a Christian; and nobody else in the house hadn’t a chance to take airs but himself.”

“What sort of airs did he take?” said Elizabeth.

“O I don’ know,” said Clam; —­ “his sort; —­ they wa’n’t like nobody else’s sort.”

“But what do you mean by airs?”

“Can’t tell,” said Clam, —­ “nothin’ like yours, Miss ’Lizabeth, —­ I take a notion to wish he was here, once in a while —­ it wouldn’t do some folks no harm.”

“Didn’t his coming put you in order too?”

Clam gave a little toss of her head, infinitely knowing and satisfied at the same time, and once more and more broadly shewed the white ivory between her not unpretty parted teeth.

“I think you want putting in order now,” said her mistress.

“Always did,” said Clam with a slight arch of her eyebrows, —­ “always shall.  Best get him to manage it, Miss ’Lizabeth —­ he can do it quicker’n anybody else —­ for me, —­ and I dare say he would for you.”

“I don’t believe you ever were put in order,” said Elizabeth, —­ “to stay.”

“I didn’t use to do a wrong thing as long as he was in the house!” said Clam.  “Didn’t want to. —­ You wouldn’t neither, if you was in the house with him.”

“What do you mean by Mrs. Landholm’s getting her face straight when he came? —­ was’nt it always so?”

“’Twa’n’t always so,” said Clam, —­ “for when he come, half the wrinkles went away, and the grey hairs all turned black again.”