"Perhaps you did an' perhaps you didn't, but all the same you're _out_ a neck-fixin', an' it's _my_ fault, an' so you're bound to let me get square, to save my face, Miss Claire. You see how it is, don't you? Well, last Christmas, Mrs. Granville she give me a lace jabbow--reel Irish mull an' Carrickmacross (that's lace from the old country, as you know as well as me). She told me all about it. Fine? It'd break your heart to think o' one o' them poor innercent colleens over there pricklin' her eyes out, makin' such grandjer for the like o' me, when no doubt she thought she was doin' it for some great dame, would be sportin' it out loud, in her auta on Fifth Avenoo. What use have I, in my business, for that kinder decoration, I should like to know! It'd only be distractin' me, gettin' in me pails when I'm scrubbin'. An' by the time Cora an' Francie is grown up, jabbows will be _out_. I'd much more use for the five-dollar-bill was folded up in the box alongside. _That_, now, was becomin' to my peculiar style o' beauty. But the jabbow! There ain't no use talkin', Miss Claire, you'll have to take it off'n my hands, I mean my chest, an' then we'll be quits on the butterfly business, an' no thanks to your nose on either side." It was useless to protest. The next morning when Claire started forth to beard the lioness in her den, she was tricked out in all the bravery of Martha's really beautiful "jabbow," and looked "as pretty as a picture, an' then some," as Mrs. Slawson confidentially assured Sam. But the heart beneath the frilly lace and mull was anything but brave. It felt, in fact, quite as white and fluttery as the _jabbow_ looked, and when Claire found herself being actually ushered into the boudoir of the august _presence_, and told to "wait please," she thought it would stop altogether for very abject fright. Martha had tried, in a sort of casual, matter-of-course way, to prepare her little lady for the trial, by dropping hints every now and then, as to the best methods of dealing with employers--the proper way to carry oneself, when one "went to live out in private fam'lies." "You see, you always been the private fam'ly yourself, Miss Claire, so it'll come kinder strange to you first-off, to look at things the other way. But it won't be so bad after you oncet get used to it. There's one thing it's good to remember. Them high-toned folks has somehow got it fixed in their minds that _the rich must not be annoyed,_ so it'll be money in your pocket, as the sayin' is, if you can do your little stunt without makin' any fuss about it, or drawin' their attention. Just saw wood an' say nothin', as my husband says.