"Me?" repeated Martha, amazed. "I ain’t done nothin’. But pshaw! I forgot! You’re just tryin’ to take a rise out o’ me, as ushal." "A _what_?" "A rise. You know what I mean, ma’am. Tryin’ to take my measure. That’s what you’re mostly up to—only folks ain’t on to you." Madam Crewe regarded her fixedly for a moment. "Do you know, Slawson," she pronounced thoughtfully at length, "I’ve an idea I’d quite enjoy some of the things you say—_if you spoke English_. The trouble is, I don’t understand your patois." Martha smiled blandly. "Askin’ your pardon, for the liberty, I often thought the same thing o’ you. I don’t understand _your_ what-you-may-call-it, either. Nor most of us don’t understand each other’s, an’ that’s what’s the trouble with us, I guess. I sometimes wonder how we get along as good as we do, with the gibberish we talk, makin’ hash o’ what we mean, an’ sometimes, not meanin’ anythin’." "Right." "An’ the funny part is, the parties we’re most likely to slip up on is them we love the most." "Go on." "I was thinkin’ how, when my girl Cora was a baby in my arms, I had the best holt o’ her I’ll ever have, prob’ly. Her an’ me understood each other then. But now, every oncet in a while, I might as good be a Dutchman, an’ her a Figi Injun for all we make o’ each other. I try to hold in my horses, an’ hang on to all the patience I got at them times, an’ I guess she does the same, an’ somehow, we manage to rub along, but you may take it from me it’s some of a scratch! The same with the other childern, as they grow up. Even down to Sabina, who, young as she is, has a mind o’ her own an’ sever’l other parties to boot." "And in the meantime, you and your husband are going without common comforts, necessities—for those very children, who would turn about and rend you at the first opportunity." Martha laughed. "Not on your life they wouldn’t rent us—or _sell_ us either, when it come to the test. If we go without things, to give _them_ a better start, we’re not foolin’ ourselves on it, believe _me_! We’re makin’ a A1 investment. We don’t grumble at the taxes, or the ’sessments or all the rest o’ the accidental expenses—so long as we know they’re good. It’s when you’d feel you got a bad bargain on your hands, like it’d be poor drainage, or hard as rocks, or leakin’ and shifty—it’d be _then_ you’d hold back, sendin’ good money after bad. An’ then you’d be wrong. For you can take it from me, there’s no child so bad it ain’t worth savin’. You read about’m in the papers, how they steal an’ lie an’ so forth, an’ when all’s said an’ done, it’s like pictures you’d get of yourself—they ain’t as good as you are, bad as you are. No, you can’t spoil a good child, an’ you can help a bad one. So small credit to us, Sam an’ I, if we do save. It’s for the sake of our own, which, after all, we know the stuff they’re made of. Same as you and Miss Katherine." Madam Crewe was silent.