"Now, I wouldn’t call her that," said Mrs. Slawson slowly. "I kinda hate to clap a label onto a body. It’s bound to stick to’m, no matter what. It’s like a bottle. Oncet it’s had POISON marked on it, it’s under suspicion, an’ you wouldn’t make free with it, no matter how careful it’s been washed. Ol’ lady Crewe certaintly _is_ savin’, that no one can deny, an’ I’m sorry for Miss Katherine, but——" Again Mrs. Ronald let her curiosity escape in the repetition of the name Martha had just mentioned. "Miss Katherine?" "Miss Katherine’s the ol’ lady’s granddaughter, an’ you can take it from me, you wouldn’t see a han’somer in a day’s travel." "Oh, Martha, Martha!" cried Miss Claire, pretending jealousy, "I’ve got a rival. I see it! I know it! You don’t like me best any more." Mrs. Slawson laughed. "’Like you best’! Well, I guess you won’t have to lose no sleep on that account, Miss Claire. But Miss Katherine’s certaintly good-lookin’, I’ll say that for her. When I come home the next mornin’, after seein’ her firstoff, Cora says to me, ’What did she look like? was she anything like Miss Claire?’ An’ I told her: ’Miss Katherine’s the han’somest appearin’, but Miss Claire is the delicatest. Miss Claire’s the most refinder-lookin’. An’ that’s God’s truth. Miss Katherine’s tall. The sorta grand, proud-lookin’, I-would-n’t-call-the-queen-my-cousin kind. An’ _you_——! Well, you’ll know how a body feels about _you_, when the blessed lamb comes home in August, which, believe _me_, the news of it is the joyfulest ever I heard in my life. You’ll know how a body feels about _you_, by the way you feel about _it_. Like pertectin’ it, an’ caressin’ it, an’—an’—keepin’ harm away from the innercent heart of it. If you don’t believe me, ask Lord Ronald." "’Ask Lord Ronald,’ _what_?" Mrs. Slawson turned composedly to face the master of the house, as if his appearance in the doorway, just at that precise moment, had been "according to specifications." "I was tellin’ Miss Claire—beggin’ your pardon, _Mrs. Ronald_—about ol’ lady Crewe, up-the-road-a-ways." Mr. Ronald disposed of his long person in a cretonne-covered lounging chair. "Do you know her, Frank?" As Claire spoke she slipped into her adjoining dressing-room, to arrange her hair and put on a fresh frock. "Why, yes—and no," he replied. "Of course all the neighborhood knows about Madam Crewe. I used to hear my father talk about her. But she is rather a formidable little person. She is not to be approached lightly. I doubt if any one _knows_ her. She was Idea Stryker. An only child. ’Very beautiful,’ the governor said,—’a great match.’ Her father was exceedingly high and mighty. An English _younger son_, with feudalistic notions. Nobody over here was good enough for him, except my father, with whom he was uncommonly friendly. Stryker was difficult, a choleric, fiery-tongued individual, much disliked in the state, though, my father always said, he meant well."