"Miss Katherine! Miss Katherine!" she shouted past the two silent figures, just outside the threshold, "Say, Miss _Katherine_! Are you downstairs? Yes? The doctor gone yet? Say, hurry! Get Sam to go after’m, an’ see can he call’m back! Your gran’ma wants’m!" *CHAPTER III* Katherine Crewe awoke next morning to find Mrs. Slawson standing by her bedside, bearing a breakfast tray. "It’s earlier than I’d ’a’ chose to disturb you," Martha explained apologetically, "but I gotta go home an’ feed my fam’ly, an’ see the raft o’ them gets a good start for the day." "But you haven’t had any rest! You made me go to bed, but _you_ must have sat up all night." The girl spoke with compunction, looking regretfully at Mrs. Slawson’s heavy eyes. "Me? Now, don’t you worry your head about me," Martha returned, as she placed the tray in a convenient position, and arranged the pillows back of Miss Crewe, so they gave her comfortable support. "_I_ got along all right. An’ your gran’ma slep’ fine. I went parolin’ ’round, every oncet in a while, to see if she’d need anythin’, an’ each time she was breathin’ as peaceful as a baby. You’ll think I’m awful, but whenever I remember las’ night, an’ me carryin’ things with a high hand against her will, I almost kill myself laughin’. Poor ol’ lady! the way she looked at me! It was like a song they learn the childern to sing, down home—I should say New York, in the high school Cora went to. "’Drink to me only with thine eyes——,’ whatever that means. With your gran’ma it was, _Cuss at me only with thine eyes_. She didn’t open her head to say a word, but what she meant was plain as preachin’—only not quite so pious." Miss Crewe bit her lip to keep from smiling. "You’ve been very kind to us, Mrs. Slawson. I don’t know how to thank you," she said. When Martha had gone the girl rose, hurriedly bathed and dressed, then made her way to her grandmother. She did not know much about nursing, but she knew she must not carry a long face into a sick-room, and the question was, how to help it. Her heart was very heavy. Ever since the attack yesterday afternoon, her mind had been going over and over what this sickness was bound to entail. Things had been hard enough before, but she saw how this might add intolerable burdens, and, in the face of it, she must look cheerful, give no sign of the discouragement she felt.