keep in for another minute. _I've got a
job!_ A fine, three-hundred-dollars-a-year-and-home-and-laundry job! And
a raise, as soon as I show I'm worth it! Now, what do you think of that?
Isn't it splendid? Isn't it--_bully_?"

She had noiselessly guided Martha into her own room, got her things off,
and seated her in a comfortable Morris chair before the lighted
oil-stove, from whose pierced iron top a golden light gleamed cheerily,
reflecting on the ceiling above in a curious pattern.

"Be careful of the chocolate, it's burning hot. I kept it simmering till
I heard you shut the vestibule door. And--O, yes! No danger in sipping
it that way! But you haven't asked a single thing about my job. How I
came to know of it in the first place, and how I was clever enough to
get it after I'd applied! You don't look a bit pleased and excited over
it, you bad Martha! And you ought to be so glad, because I won't need to
spend anything _like_ all the money I'll get. I'm to have my home and
laundry free, and one can't make many outside expenses in a
boarding-school 'way off in Schoharie--and so I can send you a lot and a
lot of dollars, till we're all squared up and smoothed out, and you
won't have to work so hard any more, and--"

"Say now, Miss Claire, you certaintly are the fastest thing on record.
If you'd been born a train, you'd been an express, shoor-pop an' no
mistake. Didn't I tell you to hold on, pationate an' uncomplainin', till
I giv' you the sign? Didn't I say I had my eye on a job for you that was
a job worth talkin' about? One that'd be satisfactry all around. Well,
then! An' here you are, tellin' me about you goin' to the old Harry, or
some such, with home an' laundry thrown in. Not on your life you ain't,
Miss Claire, an' that (beggin' your pardon!) is all there is _to_ it!"

"But, Martha--"

"Don't let's waste no more words. The thing ain't to be thought of."

"But, Martha, it's over two weeks since you said that, about having an
idea about a certain job for me that was going to be so splendid. Don't
you know it is? And I thought it had fallen through. I didn't like to
speak about it, for fear you'd think I was hurrying you, but two weeks
are two weeks, and I can't go on indefinitely staying here, and getting
so deep in debt I'll never be able to get out again. And I saw this
advertisement in _The Outlook._ 'Twas for a college graduate to teach
High School English in a girls' boarding-school, and I went to the
a