"I guess we better wait a while, an’ see how we feel about each other later," Martha explained without animus. "My husban’ says, ’No, you don’t!’ so’ o’ course that settles it for the present, anyhow. It’s a kind o’ pity things has come to this pass, for I don’t like to be on the outs with anybody. But you certaintly took a risk, Mrs. Peckett. If my husban’ had been like _some_ men——! I don’t see how you dared do it, knowin’ you’re a woman, yourself, with a man o’ your own. P’raps ’twas because you’d set out to make me over, that you hold me so cheap. I always noticed folks is never so choice o’ made-over things. They think the best wear’s out of’m anyhow, an’ it don’t matter if they do use’m sort o’ careless now. But it _is_ matter, for it’s _you’ll_ be blamed for not bein’ clean, not the thing you’ve dirtied. Besides, sometimes a _made-over_ will serve you better than new. I give you leave to remember that, Mrs. Peckett." When their visitor was gone, Ma began to cry aloud. "The fear is in me heart. I haven’t a limb to move, the way I’d be dreadin’ Sam’s punishin’ me!" she moaned, rocking backward and forward in her chair. "He’ll not punish you, Ma!" Martha promised. Still Sam bent stormy brows upon his mother. "I’ll not punish you," he said, "but after what’s happened, I guess we’ll all feel happier if you make your home away from this." "I’ll die ere ever I’ll go back to New York City to live wit’ the likes o’ them as don’t want me!" sobbed the old woman explosively. "A Home, then. I’ll see you settled in a good Home." Ma looked into his stern eyes, saw no relenting there, and turned to Martha. She held up her hands with the mute appeal of a child begging to be carried. And Martha nodded. She would carry her. "For," she explained to Sam, later, "Ma’s only a child, after all. With no more sense, or as much as Sabina. Let her stay, Sam." *CHAPTER XVI* Martha had been gone but a quarter of an hour or so, when Katherine appeared at her grandmother’s door. It had become a purely perfunctory act, this pausing at the sitting-room threshold, and asking, "Can I do anything for you, grandmother?" To-night the answer was startlingly out of the ordinary. "Yes. Come in. I want to speak to you." The girl came forward, outwardly calm, inwardly, so shaken with a morbid dread of what might await her, that she dared not venture to speak, for fear her voice would betray her. "Light the lamp." Her uncertain fingers fumbled the first match, till it dropped to the floor. The second went out, before she could guide it to the wick. Only at the third attempt was she successful—and she knew her grandmother despised clumsy inefficiency. "Where have you been?" "To the Ronalds. We’re getting up a course of lectures, don’t you remember, for the natives—to run through the winter." "The natives to run through the winter?" Katherine shrank back hypersensitively from the foolish banter.