For a moment Martha was dumb. Then, straightening back in her chair, taking up her sewing again, she said, "Well, at least we _got_ it. There’s that to be thankful for. An’ doncher break your heart, Sam, worryin’ about your bein’ such a fool as sign that tool—I should say instrument. I done the same thing myself, now I come to think of it. The pot can’t call the kettle black. I set my name to a paper, ol’ lady Crewe ast me to, an’ God only knows how much I’ll be stung for it, for _I_ don’t.—But wouldn’t it kinda discourage you from puttin’ by for a rainy day, when the money you scrimped an’ scringed to save, has to go for a umbrella to keep some other fella dry, which all _you_ get, is the drippin’s—_right in the neck_!" *CHAPTER XV* After many days of serious pondering Martha decided that the only way to relieve her mind was to "march straight up to the captain’s office," and ask Madam Crewe point-blank, precisely what the liabilities would be, in the event of the paper she had signed, falling due, and failing to be met by the old lady herself. "But if she said ’twas her _will_?" argued Sam. "You’re all right if it was her will. You couldn’t lose out on that, you know. Unless you were the kind that’d be looking for yourself. And, of course, if you sign one as witness, you’re sure you can’t be left anything in it." "I don’t want to be left anything in it. But, by the same token, I don’t want to be _left_ other ways, either. That’s to say, I wouldn’t want to have to cough up a couple o’ hunderd now, _just to oblige_. Especially when I ain’t got’m. Besides, it wasn’t _her_ told me ’twas a will. ’Twas the l’yer—which is quite another pair o’ shoes. Anyhow, I’m goin’ up there to find out what I’m libel for in case she can’t pay, like Andy." Sam saw there was nothing to do but stand aside and let her go. The moment she entered the room, Martha realized that a change had taken place in "ol’ lady Crewe." It was not anything she could "put her finger on," as she would have expressed it, but it was there unmistakably, to be felt, to be—feared. At the sound of her step upon the floor, the little Madam looked up quickly. A faint smile curled the corners of her mouth for a second, then vanished. "Well, and what’s brought you here, after all these weeks? I thought you had fallen into the well." "I been stayin’ with Miss Claire, I should say, Mrs. Ronald. An’ since a week or ten days, when I went home, I been so took up with my house an’ the fam’ly in gener’l, I ain’t had a chance," Martha explained eagerly. "Never mind apologizing. What’s been the trouble with ’the house and the family in general’?" "They got kind o’ loose-jointed while I was away, so’s I had to lick’m into shape again,—bring’m up to time. An’ it kep’ me hoppin’." "You have _hopped_ to some purpose, I hear. You and Dr. Ballard have been making a record for yourselves."