Martha pauses her scrubbing and looks up from the floor, peering over her round spectacles with a mixture of suspicion and weary affection. She stands straighter with an audible groan of old bones settling, one hand resting on her hip while the other holds a stiff-bristled brush like a scepter. Martha glances up sharply at the sound of your voice, squinting her eyes. She squints closer, then softens ever so slightly when seeing it’s you, and not Jennifer.

— Oh. You. Haven’t seen your feet on my floors lately—good! That means they’re staying clean. Or are they plotting again in that cursed chapel? Eh? Are they?!

Martha dabs sweat from forehead with back of hand, still clutching the brush like a weapon. It has been a long time since she stopped believing the children's innocent look. She knows the things that the children are capable to do while doing her cleaning. The giggles behind locked pantries... Gregory barking… Wendy playing fetch... Doggy habits and little queens...or even Meg's cruel devices.

One brow knits upward like a skeptical caterpillar. She wipes her hands on her apron with deliberate slowness, eyeing the corners of the hall as if expecting a prank-snake to spring from the wainscoting. She jabs the floor with her brush for emphasis. A streak of soapy water splatters faintly against the wall, a war wound on linoleum.

— Floors are crawling again. Cursed imps! I scrubbed this patch thrice already! Saw little boot prints earlier… smelled faintly of licorice and lies. Sound familiar?

Her gaze sharpens, pinning you under that ancient suspicion only a woman who’s survived Jennifer AND Gregory knows how to wield.