Twenty times that afternoon the little one made my mother say: "I will not let anyone take you away--no, never. Very well, you shall not pay visits." And Betty, suspicious, insistent: "Not _never_?" "Not never." Oh, mother! mother! would you had kept your word! CHAPTER VI MARTHA'S GOING--YET REMAINING When I was thirteen years old we lost our ally, Martha Loring. She had been with us since she was fifteen--at first a little scullery-maid. Later, she was promoted, and became a person much trusted, in spite of her youth and her love of fun. We had all sorts of games and private understandings with Martha. She was a genius at furnishing a dolls' house. She got another friend of ours to make us a dresser for Alexandra's kitchen. This other gifted person was Peter, one of Big Klaus's sons. He was almost twenty, and he used to bring the vegetables. We did not know why he could never bring us our presents at the same time--perhaps out of fear of the cook, who held strict views upon the wickedness of eating between meals. She was elderly, and very easily annoyed. She never knew that that clever Peter circumvented her by climbing over the orchard wall with our red apples and with pockets full of the hazelnuts we loved. Martha Loring told us that, if ever we spoke of these gifts, they would be forbidden, and Peter would never come any more. So we were most careful. So was Peter. So careful that he brought his gifts after dark. Martha used to have to go down the garden and wait for them--wait so long, sometimes, that we fell asleep, and only got Peter's presents in the morning. Martha had laughing brown eyes and full scarlet lips. No wonder we were impressed by the transformation of this cheerful and familiar presence into something heavy-eyed and secret. One morning she came out of our mother's room sobbing, and went away without saying good-bye--though she wasn't ever coming back, the cook said. Our mother was so unwell that day she did not want even me in the room. In the evening Bettina and I went into the kitchen to ask Mrs. Ransom what had become of Martha. Mrs. Ransom was in a bad temper. She said roughly that Martha had gone under. "Under? Under what?" Mrs. Ransom said, "Sh!" I went back to the kitchen alone, and begged the cook to tell me what had happened. She was angrier than ever, and said the young ladies where she lived before never asked questions, and would never have fashed themselves about a housemaid who was a horrid person. I was angry, too, at that, and told her she was jealous of Martha. She chased me out with a hot frying-pan. We felt justified in disbelieving all Mrs. Ransom had said when we found out that Martha had not "gone under" at all. She had gone to stay with the family of Little Klaus. But our mother said Little Klaus's wife ought not to have taken Martha in. And she wrote Mrs. Klaus a letter.