place "rid up" so it was "clean as a whistle an' neat as a pin."

Ma was not what Martha approvingly called "a hustler."

"Ma ain't thorer," her daughter-in-law confided to Claire, without
reproach. "She means well, but, as she says, her mind ain't fixed on
things below, an' when that's the case, the dirt is bound to settle. Ma
thinks you can run a fam'ly, readin' the Bible an' singin' hymns. Well,
p'raps you can, only I ain't never dared try. When I married Sammy he
looked dretful peaky, the fack bein' he hadn't never been properly fed,
an' it's took me all of the goin'-on fifteen years now, we been livin'
together, to get'm filled up accordin' to his appetite, which is heavy.
You see, Ma never had any time to attend to such earthly matters as
cookin' a square meal--but she's settin' out to have a lot of leisure
with the Lord."

As for Ma, she found it pleasant to watch, from a comfortable distance,
the work progressing satisfactorily, without any draft on her own
energies.

"Martha's a good woman, miss," she observed judicially, in her detached
manner, "but she is like the lady of her name we read about in the
blessed Book. When _I_ set out in life, I chose the betther part, an'
now I'm old, I have the faith to believe I'll have a front seat in
heaven. I've knew throuble in me day. I raised ten childern, an' I had
three felons, an' God knows I think I earned a front seat in heaven."

Claire's pause, before she spoke, seemed to Ma to indicate she was
giving the subject the weighty consideration it deserved.