Shortly after, Claire’s door quietly opened, and Cora, with a lighted taper in her hand, tiptoed cautiously in, like a young torch-bearing avant-courriere, behind whom Mrs. Slawson, laden with a wonderful tray, advanced processionally.

“Light the changelier, an’ then turn it low,” Martha whispered.  “An’ then you, yourself, light out, so’s the pretty lady can eat in comfort.”

The pretty lady, sitting up among her pillows, awake and alert, almost brought disaster upon the taper, and the tray, by exclaiming brightly, “Good-evening!  I’m wide awake for good!  You needn’t tiptoe or hush any more.  O, I feel like new!  All rested and well and—­ready again.  And I owe it, every bit, to you!  You’ve been so good to me!”

It was hard on Cora to have to obey her mother’s injunction to “clear out,” just when the pretty lady was beginning to demonstrate her right to the title.  But Martha’s word in her little household was not to be disputed with impunity, and Cora slipped away reluctantly, carrying with her a dazzling vision of soft, dark hair, starry blue-gray eyes, wonderful changing expressions, and, in and over all, a smile that was like a key to unlock hearts.

“My, but it’s good to see you so!” said Mrs. Slawson heartily.  “I was glad to have you sleep, for goodness knows you needed it, but if you’d ‘a’ kep’ it up a day or so longer, I’d ‘a’ called in a doctor—­shoor!  Just as a kind of nacherl percaution, against your settlin’ down to a permanent sleepin’-beauty ack, for, you can take it from me, I haven’t the business address of any Beast, here in New York City, could be counted on to do the Prince-turn, when needed.  There’s plenty of beasts, worse luck! but they’re on the job, for fair.  No magic, lightenin’-change about them.  They stay beasts straight through the performance.”

Claire laughed.

“But, as it happened, I didn’t need a Prince, did I?  I didn’t need a Prince or any one else, for I had a good fairy godmother who—­O, Mrs. Slawson, I—­I—­can’t—­”

“You don’t have to.  An’ I’m not Mrs. Slawson to you.  I’m just Martha, for I feel like you was my own young lady, an’ if you call me Mrs. Slawson, I won’t feel so, an’ here—­now—­see if you can clear up this tray so clean it’ll seem silly to wash the dishes.”

For a moment there was silence in the little room, while Claire tried to compose herself, and Martha pretended to be busy with the tray.  Then Claire said, “I’ll be very glad to call you Martha if you’ll let me, and there’s something I’d like to say right off, because I’ve been lying here quite a while thinking about it, and it’s very important, indeed.  It’s about my future, and—­”