"If I could do with her, like I do with Buller, I wouldn’t say a word," she ruminated. "I just keep a kinda gener’l line on him, an’ when the time comes, I get a-holt of his collar-band, an’ march’m up to the captain’s office, as brave as a lion. He’s got so the minute I tip’m the wink, he comes for his washin’ an’ ironin’—I should say, bandidgin’, as meek as a lamb to the slaughterhouse. But you can take it from me, there’s no gettin’ a line on Miss Katherine. She’s devotin’ all her time an’ attention to puttin’ off flesh an’ color. The trouble is, she’s got nothin’ to do, an’ she does it so thora, she ain’t got time for anything else. Dear me! I wisht I could sort o’ set her an’ Buller at each other. It might help’m both to forget their losses. He certaintly is a queer dick, an’ no mistake!" "In spite o’ his sportin’ a G.A.R. one, you can take it from _me_, Buller ain’t got all his buttons!" she told Miss Katherine. "Do you know what he says? He says everybody’s gone back on’m because he’s in trouble. He says, nobody’ll look at’m now he’s mangled. They was his friends before, when he had all the limbs was comin’ to’m, but—now he’s shy a hand—they’re too proud to notice’m. He says the world’s a hard place for cripples." A faint smile flitted across Katherine’s face "What a perverted point of view," she said, for the sake of saying something. "Do you know what I think?" Mrs. Slawson continued. "I think now is the zoological moment to catch Buller, an’ see what kind o’ animal he is—_if_ he’s got the makin’ of a man in’m. If he could be got to give up the drink, I do believe he might amount to somethin’ yet. You can’t know what a fella reely is, when he’s always steepin’ in licka. It’s like pickles. You wouldn’t know if they’re dill, or sweet or what they are, till you take’m out o’ soak an’ test’m." "I should think _you_ might influence him," suggested Miss Crewe impersonally. "You’re so strong and wholesome and steady." "Land, no! Buller wouldn’t listen to me," said Martha. "How would _I_ be reformin’ anybody, when so many is reformin’ me?" "Mrs. Peckett, then?" "Mrs. Peckett’s way o’ doin’ things makes some folks nervous. It’s like as if she said: ’I’m goin’ to raise the tone o’ this town, if I have to raise it by the scruff of its neck!’ She’s a good woman, Mrs. Peckett is, more power to her! Yes, she’s as good as old gold, and—just as dull." Katherine was amused. "Does Mr. Buller require people to be so very brilliant, then?" "Land, no! _He_ don’t. But his _case_ does. There’s a differnce. The fella that gets the whip-hand of’m is the fella he’s goin’ to respec’. No others need apply. If there was anybody in this town could kinda give’m the fright of his life on the licka question, it’d be dead easy tame him to’m afterwords." Miss Crewe’s face lost its apathetic expression. A light of interest shone in her eyes.