Martha By-the-Day

by Julie M. Lippmann

"Well, if I can't smack my lips, there's always the alternative of smacking him."

Mr. Ronald laughed. "Not allowed," he announced regretfully. "My sister won't have it. Radcliffe is to be guided 'by love alone.'"

"Whose love, please? His or mine?"

Again Mr. Ronald laughed. "Now you've got me!" he admitted. "Perhaps a little of both. Do you think you could supply your share? I have no doubt of your being able to secure his."

"I like children. We've always managed to hit it off pretty well, the kiddies and I, but, of course, I can't guarantee anything definite in connection with your little boy, because, you see, I've never been a governess before. I've only had to do with youngsters who've come a-visiting, or else the small, lower East-siders at the Settlement. But I'll promise to do my best."

"'Who does the best his circumstance allows, does well, acts nobly. Angles could no more,' as I wrote in my sister's autograph-album when I was a boy," announced Mr. Ronald gravely.

Claire smiled over at him with appreciation. "I'd love to come and try," she said heartily.

She did not realize she had lost all sensation of alarm, had forgotten her altered position, that she was no longer one whom these people would regard as their social equal. She was talking as one talks to a friend.

"And if Radcliffe doesn't get on—if he doesn't improve, I should say—if you don't like me, you can always send me away, you know."

For a very long moment Mr. Ronald sat silent. So long a moment, indeed, that Claire, waiting in growing suspense for his answer, suddenly remembered all those things she had forgotten, and her earlier embarrassment returned with a wave of bitter self-reproach. She accused herself of having been too free. She had overstepped her privilege. It was not apparent to her that he was trying to visualize the picture she had drawn, the possibility of his not liking her and sending her away, you know, and that, to his utter consternation, he found it was something he could not in the least conceive of himself as doing. That, on the contrary, the vision of her going away for any reason, of her passing out of his life, now she had once stepped into it, left him with a chill sensation in the cardiac region that was as unexpected as it was disturbing. When he spoke at last, it was with a quick, authoritative brevity that seemed to Claire to bear out her apprehension, and prove he thought she had forgotten her place, her new place as "hired help," and must be checked lest she presume on good nature and take a tone to her employers that was not to be tolerated.