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