'd think I was the grandest lady in the land. He never sees
me but it's, 'How d'do, Martha?' or, 'How's the childern an' Mr. Slawson
these days?' He certainly has got grand ways with'm, Mr. Frank has. An'
yet, he's never free. You wouldn't dare make bold with'm. His eyes has
a sort o' _keep-off-the-grass_ look gener'ly, but when he smiles down at
you, friendly-like, why, you wouldn't call the queen your cousin.
Radcliffe knows he can't monkey with his uncle Frank, an' when he's by,
butter wouldn't melt in that young un's mouth. But other times--my! You
see, Mrs. Sherman is dead easy. She told me oncet, childern ought to be
brought up 'scientifically.' Lord! She said they'd ought to be let
_express their souls_, whatever she means by that. I told her I thought
it was safer not to trust too much to the childern's souls, but to help
along some occasional with your own--the sole of your slipper. It was
then she said she 'abserlootly forbid' any one to touch Radcliffe. She
wanted him 'guided by love alone.' Well, that's what he's been guided
with, an', you can take it from me, love's made a hash of it, as it
ushally does when it ain't mixed with a little common sense. You'd
oughta see that fella's anticks when his mother, an' Lord Ronald, ain't
by. He'd raise the hair offn your head, if you hadn't a spear of it
there to begin with. He speaks to the help as if they was dirt under his
feet, an' he'd as lief lie as look at you, an' always up to some new
devilment. It'd take your time to think fast enough to keep up with'm.
But he ain't all bad--I don't believe no child _is_, not on your life,
an' my idea is, he'd turn out O.K. if only he'd the right sort o'
handlin'. Mr. Frank could do it--but when Lord Ronald is by, Radcliffe
is a pet lamb--a little woolly wonder. You ast me why I call Mr. Frank
Lord Ronald. I never thought of it till one time when Cora said a piece
at a Sund'-School ent'tainment. I can't tell you what the piece was,
for, to be perfectly honest, I was too took up, at the time, watchin'
Cora's stockin', which was comin' down, right before the whole
churchful. It reely didn't, but I seen the garter hangin', an' I thought
it would, any minute. I remember it was somethin' about a fella called
Lord Ronald, who was a reel thorerbred, just like Mr. Frank is. I
recklect one of the verses went:

"'Lord Ronald had the lily-white dough--'

(to my way o' thinkin' it's no matter about the color, white or gold or
just plai