"It’s too humiliating to have to repeat it," Katherine fairly wailed. "She’s old. She doesn’t realize how things sound. She said—I’m quoting, word for word—repeating every foolish syllable, but you _will_ have it. She said: ’I know the Ballard tribe. I knew it, when I was young. It injured me and mine, and it will you, if you don’t leave it alone. Leave this fellow alone, and see he leaves you. Understand?’" "So! Well, that sounds ’kinda moreish,’ as Mrs. Slawson says. I wish you’d go on. She didn’t tell you what _the Ballard tribe_ was guilty of? No? Then I’ll have to look into it, and find out for myself. I never was much on genealogy, but if we’ve a real, sure-nuff villain in the family—a villain whose yellow streak is like to crop out unto the third and fourth generations—why, I’m on to his trail. I’m going to hunt him down. It’ll be something to amuse me, while, as you say, I’m _waiting for patients_." *CHAPTER VI* "You take up every little point in the edge, an’ pin it down to the frame, like this. See! Doncher stretch the lace so tight it’ll tear on you. Gentle now! Watch me, an’ then you folla suit." Martha had pressed Cora into service, to do apprentice-duty; and was instructing her in the gentle art of curtain-cleansing. From a far corner of the garret-room, where, for convenience and safety, the frames had been set, Flicker, the dog, sat watching with intent expression. Occasionally, when one or the other of his friends seemed on the point of noticing him, he wagged an impartial, responsive tail. "I want to do this job so good it couldn’t be done better," Mrs. Slawson observed, her skilful fingers plying away busily as she spoke. Cora sniffed. "Seems to me you always want to do every job ’so good it couldn’t be done better,’" she grumbled. "I never saw anybody so particular as you. Ann Upton’s mother ain’t. Ann Upton’s mother says it’s wastin’ time. That’s the reason she can make Ann such stylish clo’es, ’cause she don’t waste time. She says she does things _good enough_, an’ if folks don’t like it, they can lump it." "Well, Mrs. Upton certaintly’s got a right to her own opinion. Far be it from me to deprive her of it. But her opinion an’ mine don’t gee, that’s all. One thing I know—if you only try to do _good enough_, you’re goin’ to get left in the end, an’ don’t you forget it. You can take it from me, you won’t find any admirin’ crowds lingerin’ ’round _your_ doorstep, young lady. Did you never hear the sayin’: Leave good enough alone? Well, that’s how they leave it, because everybody is hurryin’ to get the fella can be depended on to do the _best_ work for the money. If you’re satisfied to do things _good enough_, you’re goin’ to be left alone, an’ if _you_ like that kind o’ solitary granjer, you’re welcome to it. That’s all I got to say—on this subjec’."