"She's an impressionist. That's what's the matter with Hannah!—I should say, Martha. She gets and produces her effects in the large. She doesn't trouble with details. After all, I wonder if we'd like her better, given the possibility of making a grammarian of her."
Katharine smiled.
"She told me, the other day, that she was being made over. She mentioned the people concerned in it, and the different things they were making her over into. I don't recollect that grammarian was in the list."
"If the rest succeed as well in their efforts as I would in mine, if I attempted to make a Lindley Murray of her, I don't think we need worry. She'll progress along her own lines. But she's not various. You can't make a complex organism out of an elemental creature like Mrs. Slawson, any more than you could make a contemporaneous 'new woman' out of Brunnhilde."
"Fancy Martha mounted on a celestial steed, bearing the souls of dead heroes to Walhalla!"
Dr. Ballard laughed.
"Well, I can tell you this, if she saw 'twas for the good of the souls, not the celestial steed, nor the dead heroes, nor Walhalla itself, would faze her. If you ever should need some one to stand by in an emergency, I couldn't think of a better than Martha Slawson. I hope you'll remember that, when I'm gone."
A moment, and he was gone, had turned abruptly, and left her without even so much as good-by.
Katherine bent her head to look down at the hand he had held, on which presently two tears plashed.
"She'll shut me off from that, too," she murmured bitterly. "She'll shut me off from that too—if she can!"