The morning of the great day on which the Ronalds were expected to arrive, Martha was astir at sunrise, summoning her brood with the call: "Miss Claire's comin' home! Miss Claire's comin' home!"
"I'd call her Missis, considering," suggested Sam, yawning as he tucked his pillow more comfortably beneath his rough cheek.
"All right, call her it, if it's a comfort to you. Only get a move on," his wife replied, plucking the pillow unceremoniously out from under, giving it a mighty shake, and setting it across the sleeping-porch rail to air.
"You can take it from me, my hands is full this day. I've no time to parley, fussin' over my articles of speech. Besides, Miss Claire knows me an' my ways. If I was any diff'rent from what she's used to, she'd be disappointed."
"I thought Mrs. Peckett was making you over. To say nothing of Cora, and Ma. Perhaps Mrs. Ronald will take a hand at it, too. You never can tell."
"True for you, you never can," Martha admitted. "Who'd 'a' thought, now, ol' lady Crewe would ever be troublin' her head about me, an' yet one o' the first things she said, when she got her power back, an' could pronunciate clearly, was—'You'd oughta keep a cow!' Knowin' the risks run by those that does, from the effects o' hoofs an' horns, an' simular attachments, I mighta thought she wanted to see my finish, because o' the way I lit in, an' give her a rub-down against her will, the night she was took sick. But she didn't. She don't bear no ill will. It was just she thought keepin' a cow would be cheaper for our fam'ly, than keepin' the milkman. She wants to turn me into a farmer, an' who knows! You never can tell, as you say. That's what I may turn into before I'm done. But what I'm occupied with at the present moment is—did you get that la'nch fixed up good last night, like I told you to? As soon as the breakfast dishes is washed, I wanta take the childern, an' go acrost the lake to get laurel for my decorations."
Sam paused in the act of shaving, to turn his lathered cheek toward her.
"The launch is O.K., but I'm uneasy every time you take her out on the water alone, mother. I'm not sure you understand the motor. And if a squall blew up sudden——"
"Now, don't you worry your head over me, that's a good fella. I understand that la'nch, an' the auta, as good as if all three of us hada been born an' brought up by the same mother. The things I can't seem to get a line on is animals. Hens, an' cows, an' so forth. They take my time! O' course, to look at 'em, you'd know hens ain't very brainy.—Look at the way they behave in front o' autas, or anythin' drivin' up! They're as undecided as a woman at a bargain-counter, thinkin' will she buy a remlet o' baby-blue ribbon, or go to Huyler's an' get a chocolate ice-cream soda. They're hippin' an' hawin', till it'd be a pleasure to run 'em down. Cows ain't got that trick, but they're queer in their own way, an' the both o' them is too, what Mrs. Sherman calls, temper-mental to suit me. Now, who'd 'a' thought all them chicks woulda died on me, just because they got damped down some, that cold, wet spell we had along in March? If they'd 'a' told me they wanted to come in outa the wet, I'd 'a' fetched 'em indoors, or I'd 'a' went out an' held their hands. Anythin' to oblige. But not on your life! They was mum as oysters. They just up an' died on me, without so much as a beg to be excused—the whole bloomin' lot o' them. The Lord tempers the cold to the shorn lamb, but I notice it aint reggerlated much of any in the case o' chickens. An' talkin' o' chickens, I wonda if that same Sammy done what I told'm an' whitewashed the henhouse thora inside. Mrs. Peckett says you gotta do it every oncet in a while, to keep the vermin down. The quicklime kills 'em."
Breakfast well under way, Mrs. Slawson went out on a tour of inspection. Evidently what she found did not satisfy her, for, when the family had had its meal, and was about to rise and disperse, she held Sammy back with a detaining hand.