Mrs. Peckett laid a restraining hand on Martha’s shoulder. "Now don’t you stir a step," she admonished. "It’s full two miles to walk to the Crewe place, and the traveling’s heavy, on account of the dry spell. By the time you get there, most likely somebody else will have passed with a team, and you’ll have your trouble for your pains. It won’t hurt _them_ a mite to go out of their way, if they’re driving. That’s what I say to Mr. P. ’Don’t be too quick offering. Give other folks a chance.’ Now, here were you, not half an hour back, saying you’d like I should improve you. Well, this is your first lesson. Stay where you are, and let some one nearer to, do the helping." "Good idea!" vouchsafed Sam Slawson senior, speaking for the first time. As soon as Mrs. Peckett was well out of sight and hearing, Martha turned reprovingly upon her husband. "Sam Slawson, what d’you mean by——?" Sam composedly pulled on his boots. "Only way to get rid of her," he answered succinctly. "Oh!" said Martha, going to the cupboard, where she kept her store of simple home remedies. "Now, if _you’re_ ready, _I_ am. An’, young Sammy, you run, an’ tell your gran’mother to give you childern bread an’ milk for your suppers. Your father an’ I are goin’ out. We mayn’t be back till late." *CHAPTER II* It was dusk when Martha reached the Crewe place. As she turned in at the entrance-gate, she thought she saw a spark of light prick out through the darkness of one of the upper-story windows, but the next instant it disappeared, and the gloomy house stood formidably looming up against its background of dense foliage, facing her, as with a challenge, as black as ever. Martha Slawson was not one to be intimidated. She plodded steadily along the driveway, regardless of the strange sensation of shifty gravel crunching beneath feet used to hard city pavements, the thickening shadows to eyes accustomed to the glare of electric-lighted streets, and the soft, surreptitious stirrings of she-knew-not-what among the underbrush to ears familiar with the roar of the Elevated, the clang and dash of passing surface cars. "I don’t see the use o’ them sheds they build to the front doors o’ some o’ the houses, in these parts, which they call’m _port co-shares_, Sam tells me. You can take it from me, they’re like to break your bones, mountin’ the high step o’ them," she mused, panting with the effort it had taken to hoist her heavy frame from the level of the ground to that of the house-door. "Them swell ladies must be considerable of acrobats, to do it graceful. I know _I_ couldn’t."