Chapter V: Part 5

"The Jilkins is in from Cherry Pond, and all it did there was to rain. The Sperrits was in, too, and the storm was most singular with them. It hailed in the sunshine till they see four rainbows--they never see the beat. Mr. Weskins is advising everybody to go into their houses and make a test case of it. Judge Fitch is advising everybody not to. It's plain as he's on the side of the insurance men. He says just as they do, that we'd better wait till Mrs. Macy comes back and hear her story. He says in the very nature of things her view'll be a most general one. He says all there is to know she'll know; she'll know the area affected and be able to tell whether it was electricity or just wind. Mr. Kimball said if she went far enough, she'd be a star witness; but no one thinks that jokes about Mrs. Macy ought to be told now. The situation is too serious. It may be _very_ serious for Mrs. Macy. If the storm stopped sudden, it may be very serious indeed for Mrs. Macy. Mrs. Macy isn't as young as she was, and she hadn't the least idea of leaving town; she wasn't a bit prepared, that we can all swear to. She was just carried away by a sudden impulse--as you might say--and the main question is how far did she get on her impulse, and where is she now? To my order of thinking, it all depends on how she come down. Cycloning along like she was, if she come down on a pond or a peak, she'll be far from finding it funny. I was thinking about her all the way here, and I can't think of any way as'll be easy for her to come to earth, no matter how she comes. And if she hits hard, she isn't going to like it. Mrs. Macy was never one as took a joke pleasant; she never made light of nothing. She took life very solemn-like--a owl was a laughing hyena compared to Mrs. Macy. It's too bad she was that way. My own view is as she never got over not getting married again. Some women don't. She always took it as a reflection. There's no reflection to not getting married; my opinion is as there's a deal of things more important and most thing's more comfortable. If Mrs. Macy was married, she'd be much worse off than she is right now, for instead of being able to give her whole time and attention to whatever she's doing and looking over, she'd be wondering what he was giving his time and attention to doing and prying into. When a man's out of your sight, you've always got to wonder, and most of the time that's all in the world you can do about a man. Now Mrs. Macy's perfectly independent, she can go where she pleases and come down when she pleases, and she hasn't got to tell what she saw unless she wants to. Mrs. Brown says she ain't never been nowhere. It's plain to be seen as Mrs. Brown's envying Mrs. Macy her trip."

"But why--?" began Gran'ma Mullins with great determination.

"That's just it," replied Susan promptly. "I declare, I can't but wonder what'll happen next. I'm in that state that nothing will surprise me. Everything's so upset and off the track there's no use even trying to think. My walls is fell into my cistern, and Mrs. Macy's roof is sitting on the ground beside her house yet. The insurance men has sealed up Gran'ma Mullins' house, and they wouldn't leave the henhouse open till I signed a affidavit on behalf of the hens and released 'em from all claims for feed. Mr. Dill said they tried to seal up his cow. They've got Mr. Kimball's dried-apple machine tied with a rope. It's awful."

"But Susan--" interrupted Gran'ma Mullins.

"Mr. Weskins says the great difficulty is the insurance men say they don't see how anything is going to be settled or decided until we hear from Mrs. Macy. The point's right here. If she comes back, it's evidence as it was a tornado, because if she comes back it proves as she was carried off, in which case the insurance men won't have to pay nothing anyhow, and we'll all be unsealed and allowed to go to work putting our roofs back on our heads and clearing up as fast as we can. But Mr. Weskins says if Mrs. Macy don't come back, there'll be no way to prove as she was even carried off by the storm for you, Mrs. Lathrop, had your back turned; and you, Gran'ma Mullins, was under the roof; and I'm only one, and it takes two witnesses to prove anything as is contrary to law and nature."

"Do they doubt--?" cried Mrs. Lathrop, quite excited--for her.

"Yes, they do. They doubt everything. Insurance men don't take nothing for granted. They've decided to just pin their whole case to Mrs. Macy, and there's Mrs. Macy gone away to, heaven knows where."

"Well, Susan," said Gran'ma Mullins, "we must look on the bright side. Mrs. Macy'll have something to talk about as'll always interest everybody if she does come back, and if she don't come back, we'll always have her to remember."

"Yes, and if we don't get our houses unstuck pretty soon, we'll remember her a long while," said Susan darkly.

Three days passed by and no word was heard from Mrs. Macy. As soon as the telegraph assumed its usual route, messages were sent all about in the direction whither she had flown, but not a trace of her was discovered by any one. The town was very much wrought up, for although its members were given to having strange experiences, no experience so strange as this had ever happened there before. The exasperation of being barred out of house and home until Mrs. Macy should be found, naturally heightened the interest. Everybody had had just time to add the magic word "cyclone" to their policies before the cyclone came "damaging along"--as Susan Clegg expressed it. Susan was much perturbed.

"Well, Mrs. Lathrop,"--she said on the afternoon of the third day, as she came into the hotel room where the mother of the millionaire was now equal to her usual vigorous exercise in her old-gold-plush stationary rocker. "Well, Mrs. Lathrop, you may well be grateful as Jathrop has got money enough for us to be living here, for the living of the community is getting to be no living a _tall_."

Gran'ma Mullins, still in bed, turned herself about and manifested a vivid interest, "Well, Susan," she said, "it's three days now; how long is this going to keep up?"

"It can't keep up very much longer, or we'll have a new French Revolution, that's what we'll have," said Susan. "Why, the community is getting where it won't stand even being said good morning to pleasantly. The children is running all over, pulling each other's hair, and Deacon White says he's going to buy a pistol. Things is come to a pretty pass when Deacon White wants to buy a pistol, for he's just as afraid of one end as the other. But it's a straw as shows which way the cyclone blew his house."

"But isn't something--?"

"Something has got to be done. The boys stretched a string across the door of the insurance men's room this morning, and they fell in a heap when they started out; and some one as nobody can locate poured a pitcher of ice water through the ventilator as is over their bed. Seeing that public feeling is on the rise, they sent right after breakfast for the appraisers, and they're going to begin appraising and un-sealing to-morrow morning. They've entirely give up the idea of waiting for Mrs. Macy. The town just won't stand for any more hanging around waiting for nothing. I never see us so before. Every one is so upset and divided in their feelings that some think we'd ought to horsewhip the insurance men, and some think we'd ought to hold a burial service for Mrs. Macy."

"I wouldn't see any good in holding a service for Mrs. Macy," said Gran'ma Mullins. "She wouldn't have been buried here if she was dead; she was always planning to go to Meadville when she was dead."

"Yes," said Susan, "I know. Because Mrs. Lupey's got that nice lot with that nice mausoleum as she bought from the Pennybackers when they got rich and moved even their great-grandfather to the city."

"I remember the Pennybackers," said Gran'ma Mullins. "Old man Pennybacker used to drive a cart for rags. It was a great day for the Pennybackers when Joe went into the pawnbroker business."

"Yes," said Susan, "it's wonderful how rich men manage to get on when they're young. Seems as if there's just no way to crowd a millionaire out of business or kill him off. I'm always reading what they went through in the papers, but it never helped none. A millionaire is a thing as when it's going to be is going to be, and you've just got to let 'em do it once they get started."

"It was a nice mausoleum," said Gran'ma Mullins. "Mrs. Macy has told me about it a hundred times. It's so big, Mrs. Lupey says, she can live up to her hospitable nature at last, for there's room for all and to spare. Mrs. Macy was the first person she asked. Mrs. Macy thought that was very kind of just a cousin. There's only Mrs. Kitts there, now, and Mrs. Lupey's aunt, Mrs. Cogetts."

"Mrs. Macy didn't know she had a aunt," said Susan. "Mrs. Cogetts came way from Jacoma just on account of the mausoleum. That's a long ways to come just to save paying for a lot where you are, seems to me; but some natures'll go to any lengths to save money."

"I wonder where Mrs. Macy is now," said Gran'ma Mullins, with a sigh.

"Nobody knows. A good many is decided that it's surely a clear case of Elijah, only nobody pretends to believe in the Bible so much as to think that she can go up and stay there. Mrs. Macy'd have to come down, and the higher she went the more heaven help her when she does come down. Mrs. Macy was very solid, as we all know who've heard her sit down or seen her get up, and I can't see no happy ending ahead, even though we all wish her well. The insurance men is very blue over her not coming back, for they expected to prove a tornado sure; but even insurance men can't have the whole world run to suit them these days. Anyhow, my view is as it's no use worrying. Spilt milk's a poor thing to cook with. If you're in the fire, you ain't in the frying-pan. The real sufferers is this community, as is all locked out of their houses. The Browns is living in the cellar to the cowshed, with two lengths of sidewalk laid over them. Mrs. Brown says she feels like a Pilgrim Father, and she sees why they got killed off so fast by the Indians,--it was so much easier to be scalped than to do your hair. Mr. and Mrs. Craig takes turns at one hammock all night long. Mrs. Craig says they change regular, for whoever turns over spills out, and the other one is sitting looking at the moon and waiting all ready to get in."

"I declare, Susan," said Gran'ma Mullins warmly, "I think it's most shocking. I won't say outrageous, but I will say shocking."

"But what are you going to do about it?" said Susan. "That's the rub in this country. There's plenty as is shocking, but here we sit at the mercy of any cyclone or Congress as comes along. Here we was, peaceful, happy, and loving, and a cyclone swishes through. Down comes half a dozen men from the city and seals up everything in town. I tell you you ought to have heard me when they was sealing up your house and Mrs. Macy's. I give it to 'em, and I didn't mince matters none. I spoke my whole mind, and it was a great satisfaction, but they went right on and sealed up the houses."

"Oh, Susan," began Mrs. Lathrop, "how are--?"

"All in ruins," replied Susan promptly. "I don't believe you and me is ever going to live in happy homes any more. Fate seems dead set against the idea. And nobody can get ahead of Fate. They may talk all they please about overcoming, and when I was young I was always charging along with my horns down and my tail waving same as every other young thing; but I'm older now, and I see as resignation is the only thing as really pays in the end. I get as mad as ever, but I stay meek. I wanted to lam those insurance men with a stick of wood as was lying most handy, but all I did was to walk home. Mr. Shores says he's just the same way. We was talking it over this morning. He says when his wife first run off with his clerk, he was nigh to crazy; he says he thought getting along without a wife was going to just drive him out of his senses, and he said her taking the clerk just seemed to add insult to perjury, but he says now, as he gets older, he finds having no wife a great comfort."

"I wish Jathrop would--" sighed Mrs. Lathrop.

"Well, he will, likely enough," said Susan. "Now he's rich, some girl will snap him up, and he won't find how he's been fooled till three or four months after the wedding."

"I suppose Jathrop could marry just any one he pleased now," said Gran'ma Mullins, sighing in her turn. "Hiram didn't have no choice; Jathrop'll have a choice."

"He may be none the better for that," said Susan darkly. "If Jathrop Lathrop is wise, he'll not go routing wildly around like a president after a elephant; he'll stick to what's tried and true. But I have my doubt as to Jathrop's being wise; very few men with money have any sense."

"Who do _you_ think--?" began Mrs. Lathrop, looking intently at Susan.

"I d'n know," said Susan, looking hard at Mrs. Lathrop; "far be it from me to judge."

"They do say, Susan," said Gran'ma Mullins wisely, "as he'll end up by marrying you. Everybody says so."

Susan shook her head hard. "It's not for me to say. Affairs has been going on and off between Jathrop and me for too many years now for me to begin to discuss them. What is to be will be, and what isn't to be can't possibly be brought about."

Gran'ma Mullins sighed again, and Mrs. Lathrop went on rocking. As she rocked, she viewed Susan Clegg from time to time in a speculative manner. It was many, many years since she had suggested to Susan the idea of marrying Jathrop.

* * * * *

It was the next morning that Mrs. Macy re-appeared on the scene. The insurance men had unsealed all the houses, and the result was her discovery.

"Well, you could drown me for a new-born kitten, and I'd never open my eyes in surprise after _this_," Susan expounded to the friends at the hotel. "But Mrs. Macy always _was_ peculiar; she was always give to adventures. To think of her living there as snug as a moth in a rug, cooking her meals on the little oil-stove--"

"But where--?" interposed Mrs. Lathrop.

"I'm telling you. She's been sleeping in a good bed, too, and being perfectly comfortable while we've all been suffering along of waiting for her to come back."

"But Susan--" cried Gran'ma Mullins, wide-eyed.

"I'll tell you where she was; she was in your house--that's where she was. The cyclone just gave her a lift over your woodshed, and then it set her down pretty quick. She says she came to earth like a piece of thistledown on the other side. Her story is as your back door was open, so she run in, and then it begun to rain, so she saw no reason for going out again. When it stopped raining, she looked out and seen nobody. That isn't surprising, for we wasn't there. She thought that it was strange not seeing any lights, but she started to go home, and she says _what_ was her feelings when she fell over her own roof in the path. She says of all the strange sensations a perfectly respectable woman can possibly ever get to start to go home and fall over her own roof is surely the most singular. She says she was so sleepy she thought maybe she was dreaming, and not having any lantern, it was no use trying to investigate, so she just went back to your house and went to bed in my bed. She says she dreamed of Hiram's ears all night long. I'd completely forgot Hiram's ears, which is strange, for they was far and away the most amusing things in this community. I think that way he could turn 'em about was so entertaining. That way he used to cock 'em at you always give him the air of paying so much attention. They say he never cocked 'em at Lucy but once--"

"Oh, my, that once!" exclaimed Gran'ma Mullins involuntarily.

"It was a sin and a shame for Lucy to choke Hiram's ears off like she did," Susan declared warmly. "She just seemed to take all the courage right out of 'em. Hiram always reminded me of a black-and-tan as long as he had the free use of his ears, but after Lucy broke their backbone like she did, he never reminded me of much of nothing." Susan paused to sigh. Gran'ma Mullins wiped her eyes.

"You and Hiram give up to Lucy too much," said Susan. "I wish she'd married me."

"I wish she had, Susan," said Gran'ma Mullins. "I wouldn't wish to seem unkind to the wife of my born and wedded only son, but I do wish that she'd married you, and if Hiram could only see Lucy with a mother's clear blue eye, he'd wish it, too."

"Where is--?" asked Mrs. Lathrop, desiring to recur to the main object under discussion.

"Oh, she's gone straight over to Meadville," said Susan. "Oh, my, she says, but think of her feelings as she sat inside that nice, comfortable house and realized that she was the only person in town with a roof over her head! You see, she heard me talking with the insurance men, and she didn't know why we was to be sealed up, but she got it all straight as we was going to be turned out of house and home, and she says she made up her mind as no one should ever know as she was in a house and so come capering up to put her out. She says she settled down as still as a mouse, made no smoke, and never lit so much as a candle nights. Mrs. Macy is surely most foxy!"

"And she's gone to Meadville?" said Gran'ma Mullins.

"Yes, she didn't want to pay board here, and her own house hasn't got no roof, so she's gone to Mrs. Lupey. Old Doctor Carter was over here to appraise the damage done to folks, and he took her back with him."

"I wonder if she'll ever--" wondered Gran'ma Mullins.

"I d'n know. If folks talk about a marriage long enough, it usually ends up that way. Doctor Carter and Mrs. Macy has been kind of jumping at each other and then running away for fifteen years or so. They say he'd like her money, but he hates to be bothered with her."

"She wouldn't like to be bothered with him, either," said Gran'ma Mullins.

"I know," said Susan. "That's what's making so few people like to get married nowadays. They don't want to be bothered with each other."

Mrs. Lathrop fixed her little, black, beady eyes hard on Susan.

Susan stared straight ahead.

IX

SUSAN CLEGG'S PRACTICAL FRIEND

"Mrs. Sperrit can't stand it no longer, and she's going visiting," announced Susan Clegg to the three friends who, seated together on Mrs. Macy's piazza, had been awaiting her return from down-town. Both Mrs. Macy and Gran'ma Mullins were now back in their own houses after the temporary absence due to the cyclone, and Mrs. Lathrop and she who might yet be her daughter-in-law were reestablished as their paying guests.

"Why, I never knew that Mr. Sperrit was that kind of a man," said Gran'ma Mullins, opening her eyes very wide indeed. "I wouldn't say he's han'some, and I wouldn't say he's entertaining; but I always thought they got on well together."

"He isn't that kind of a man a _tall_," rejoined Susan, who had been holding one hatpin in her mouth while she felt for the other, but now freed herself of both. "It's just that Mrs. Sperrit's sick of all this clutter of mending up after the cyclone. She says she's nervous for the first time in her life and has got to have a change. She says the carrying off of the barn and its never being heard from any more has got on her nerves somehow, even if it was only a barn. She says God forgive her and not to mention it to you, Mrs. Macy, but she wishes every hour of her life as the cyclone had took you and left their barn, because the barn had her sewing-machine in it, and she'd as leave be dead as be without that sewing-machine."

"Where--?" mildly interpolated Mrs. Lathrop.

"Mr. Sperrit says wherever she likes. He's been upset by the barn too, because it had his tool-chest in it, and he's such a handy man with his tools that he feels for her in a way as not many women get felt for."

"Where does--?" began Gran'ma Mullins.

"She didn't know at first, but now she thinks she'll go and stay with her cousin. She hasn't had much to do with her cousin for years, and she says she feels as maybe the barn was a judgment. She never got along well with her cousin. She says her cousin was pretty, with curls, and she herself was freckled, with straight hair, and so it was only natural as she always hated her. I don't feel to blame her none, for curls is very hard on them as is born straight-haired. But there was more reasons than one for Mrs. Sperrit not to get along with her cousin, and she says it never was so much the curls as it was her not being practical. Mrs. Sperrit is practical, and she's always been practical, and her cousin wasn't. They didn't speak for years and years."

"Whatever set 'em at it again?" asked Mrs. Macy.

"Well, Mrs. Sperrit says it come by degrees. She says she first noticed as her cousin was trying to make up about five years ago, but she thought she'd best wait and be sure. Mrs. Sperrit's practical; she don't never look in anywhere until she's leaped around the edge enough to know what she's doing. She says her cousin named her first boy Gringer, which is Mrs. Sperrit's family name; but then, it is the cousin's family name, too, so she didn't pay any attention to that. Then she named her first girl Eliza, which, as we know, is Mrs. Sperrit's own name, but seeing as it was the name of the grandmother of both of them, she didn't pay any attention to _that_, either. Then she named the second boy Sperrit, which was a little pointed, of course; and Mrs. Sperrit says if her cousin had been practical, she would certainly have thought that the Sperrits ought to have given the child something. But she wasn't and didn't, and they didn't. Then she named the second girl Azile--which is Eliza spelt backwards--and Mrs. Sperrit says it was the spelling of Eliza backwards as first showed her how awful friendly her cousin was trying to get to be. Then, when she named the third boy Jacob, after Mr. Sperrit, and the fourth boy Bocaj--which is Jacob spelled backwards--Mrs. Sperrit says that it was no use pretending not to see. Besides, naming the baby Bocaj just did go to her heart, particularly as the baby wasn't very strong, anyway. So since then the Sperrits has sent 'em a turkey every Thanksgiving and a quarter apiece to the children every Christmas."

"What's she named the other children?" asked Mrs. Macy with real interest.

"Why, there ain't no more yet. Bocaj is only six months old."

"Oh, then they ain't sent no turkey yet!" exclaimed Mrs. Macy.

"No, not yet, but when they begin, they'll keep it up steady. And now Mrs. Sperrit says she'll go and visit and see for herself how things are. She's not very hopeful of enjoying herself, for she says visiting a person as isn't practical is most difficult. She knows, because when she taught school, she used to board with a family as was that way. She says she kept the things she bought then, and she shall take 'em all to her cousin's. She says when you stay with any one as isn't practical, you must take your own spirit-lamp, and teapot, and kettle, and tea, and matches, and a small blanket, and pen and ink, and a box of crackers, and a sharp knife, and some blank telegrams, and a good deal of court-plaster, and a teacup, and sugar if you take it, and a ball of good heavy string, and your own Bible, and a pillow. And never forget to wear your trunk-key round your neck, even if you only go down-stairs to look at the clock. She's got all those things left over from her school-teaching days. She says everything always comes in handy again some time if you're practical, and she thanks God she's practical."

"I don't think that I should care to visit that way," said Gran'ma Mullins thoughtfully. "I wouldn't say I wouldn't, and I wouldn't say I couldn't, but I don't think--"

"She's going Tuesday," continued Susan Clegg. "Mr. Sperrit says she can, and she's going Tuesday. She's written her cousin, and her cousin's written her. Her cousin says they'll be too glad for words, and for her to stay till Christmas--or till Thanksgiving, anyway. Mrs. Sperrit says she won't do that, but she'll stay until the end of next week if she can stand her cousin's husband. She says she never had any use for her cousin's husband, because he isn't practical either, and when he was young, his tie was never on straight. Mrs. Sperrit says a man that wears his tie crooked when he's young is the kind to keep shy of later. She says he'll never have a pocket knife and borrow hers, and never have a pencil and borrow hers. And then, too, she's almost sure as by this time he's spoilt her cousin's temper; and visiting a cousin whose temper's spoilt wouldn't be fun, even if she was practical. Which this one ain't."

"If her cousin's got a sharp tongue I--" began Gran'ma Mullins in quiet, sad reminiscence.

"She was buying some wood alcohol and a cheap spoon at Mr. Kimball's," Susan went on. "She took me in her buggy and drove me up to look at our houses, which is trying feebly to climb again to where they was before the cyclone. But they're a sorry sight. I don't know when we're ever going to get into them, I'm sure. I only wish Jathrop was to see how slow those carpenters can be." Then Miss Clegg's countenance assumed a coy expression, her eyes lowered bashfully, and her fingers nervously sought to touch between the buttons of her waist some treasured object hidden within. "I--I had a letter from him to-day."

And at that all three listeners started in more or less violent amazement.

"What!" cried Mrs. Lathrop.

"Nothing that I can tell any one," said Susan serenely. "So it's no use asking me another word about it."

Mrs. Sperrit left on Tuesday precisely and practically as she had planned; but she returned very much sooner than she had expected.

"And no wonder," declared Susan, just back from the Sewing Society, to Mrs. Lathrop, who never went. "I should say it was no wonder. Well, Mrs. Sperrit has had an experience, and I guess no lost barn will ever lead her into looking up no more cousins after this."

"She's so worn-looking," said Gran'ma Mullins, who had returned with Susan. "I wouldn't say white, and I wouldn't say worried, but I call it peaked."

"Why, she's been through enough to make a book," said Mrs. Macy, who had come in with the others, "--a book like _The Jungle_, as makes you right down sick in spots."

"Oh, _The Jungle_ isn't so bad," said Susan. "If it was, Roosevelt would have straightened it out soon enough when he was in it himself. But what's awful about Mrs. Sperrit is what she has suffered, for that woman certainly has suffered. She's a lesson once for all as to visiting. No one as hears her is ever going lightly visiting after this. She lost her trunk-key as soon as she landed in the house, and she says she was too took up to miss it for three days, which shows what kind of a time she had. Why, her cousin went right to bed as soon as she got there, because she said as she knowed that Mrs. Sperrit was practical and could do everything better than she could. So that was a nice beginning to begin with. Well, she says such a house you never see. The chickens come into the dining-room, and they was raising mud turtles in the bathtub, and caterpillars in the cake-box. The children was awful right from the start. She slept in the room with two of them, and they woke her up mornings playing shave with the ends of her braids. She found out as they dipped 'em first in the water pitcher and then in the tooth powder to make it like lather."

"My heavens alive!" exclaimed Mrs. Lathrop.

"Then Jacob, who's only two and a half, ate mashed potatoes with his fingers, which is a thing, Mrs. Sperrit says, as must be seen to be believed, and they all just swum in jam from dawn to dark. She says she never see such children, anyway. Whenever anybody sat down, they'd play she was the Alps, and go back and forth over her wherever they could get a purchase. And she says--would you believe it?--her cousin is got to be so calm that it drives you out of your senses only to see the way she takes things. Mrs. Sperrit says all she can say is as when a woman as isn't practical does go to bed, she's resigned to that degree that you wish you could blow her up with dynamite if only to see her move quick just once."

"Why didn't she come home?" asked Mrs. Macy. "My view would be as I'd come home. I said so to her to-day."

"She did come home, didn't she?" said Miss Clegg. "You heard her, and you know she's home. It's Mrs. Lathrop as all this is new to, isn't it? Well, Mrs. Lathrop, it would go to your heart to hear what happened to all those little conveniences as she took. There wasn't no sharp knife in the house but hers, so she never see hers after she unpacked it. There wasn't no string or court-plaster either, so they disappeared too. Then they run out of tea the minute they see she brought some, and not being practical, her cousin's teapot naturally didn't have no nose, so she lost her teapot, too. The whole family took her hairbrush and used it for a clothes brush, and she thinks for a shoe brush when she was down-town. Her cousin wore her stockings and her collars, and her cousin's husband slept on the pillow with the blanket folded around him. Not being practical, he liked his feet free."

"Well, I nev--!" ejaculated Mrs. Lathrop.

"Mrs. Sperrit said by the third day she had to begin to do something, so she asked if she could clean her own room, and her cousin said she was going to let her make herself happy in her own way and just to go ahead and clean the whole house if she liked. So she went to work and cleaned the whole house, and she says such a house she never dreamed could exist. She found families of mice, and families of swallows, and families of moths. She found things as had been lost for years, and they was wild with delight to see 'em again. She found things as, she says, she wouldn't like to say she found, because when all's said and done a cousin is still a cousin, but she says--Good lands, what she found! Well, she says when she got the house cleaned, her cousin was still in bed, so she took heart of grace and asked if she might teach the children to mind. Her cousin said she didn't care, so Mrs. Sperrit went to work on those six children. Well, she says that was a job, and it was that as led to her coming away like she did. She says the children was the very worst children anybody ever saw. She says she taught school, and she thought she knew children, but anything like those children nobody--even those as is chock full of things not fit to eat--could ever by any possibility of dreamed of. Why, she says they was used to heating the poker and jabbing one another with it when mad; and while you was leaning down to tie your shoe, they'd snatch your chair away from behind you, and such games. But Mrs. Sperrit is practical, and she believes in her Bible, and she thought as how the Lord had delivered them into her hands and set to work. She said she begun by washing them all--for they was always slippery from jam. And then she cut their nails very short and started in. Well, she says it was some work, for they was so funny she could hardly keep from laughing. She says they're mighty bright children--she must say that for 'em, although it don't soften her feelings a mite towards 'em. Well, she says you couldn't do nothing a _tall_ with 'em. But she didn't lose courage. When she talked serious, they took it as a great joke, and she had to stop for meals so often that it used her all up; for she says such steady eating she never see. She says the meals was most terrible, too, as they always had herring, and of course the bones made so much picking that the children kept telling her she ate with her fingers, herself. She says that was the most awful part, the way they talked back. But she didn't despair. She kept washing them out of the jam and taking a fresh cut at their nails, until finally come the last hour of wrath. And then, she says, they did make her mad--good and mad."

"But what did--?" began Mrs. Lathrop.

"Well, seems the worst child was 'Zile. Of course, Mrs. Sperrit, having taught school, thought they'd pronounce it like Azalea, and make a real pretty name out of Eliza spelt backwards, but seems they dropped the A and just called her 'Zile to rhyme with file; and Mrs. Sperrit says she rhymed with file all right."

"Go on, Susan," urged Mrs. Macy.

"Well, the cousin and the husband was invited to go on a all-day excursion, so the cousin got up and dressed and went. She said she might as well, seeing as Mrs. Sperrit was there with the children. When they was gone, Mrs. Sperrit made up her mind as now was her chance to bring those children to time, once and for all. So she rolled up her sleeves and give 'em all a good bath--for she says the way they'd get freshly jammed was most astonishing--and then she went up-stairs to get her scissors to cut their nails. She was opening her trunk to get out the scissors when she heard a click. Well, when she run to the door, what do you suppose? She found they'd locked her in.

"Well, maybe you can imagine her feelings! She says she was never so mad in all her life. She called through the door, but not a sound. There was a crack big enough to put your hand through under the door, and she tried to look through it, but it wasn't high enough to put your eye to. Then she heard a shout and run to the window. There they all was, out on the grass in front,--all but Bocaj, who was asleep in his cradle down-stairs. Well, such doings! She says 'Zile, who was always full of ideas, was just outstripping herself in ideas this time. They had a old pair of scissors, and first they went to work for half an hour cutting each other's hair. She says you can maybe think of her feelings in the upper window, left in charge of 'em, with full permission to whip 'em if necessary, and having to sit and watch 'em trim each other anyway the notion hit 'em. She says tying a man to a tree while cannibals eat up his family is the only thing as would express it a _tall_. After they got done cutting hair, they went in and got a pot of jam and brought it out and sat down in full sight and eat jam with their fingers till there was no more jam. She says she'd stopped calling things to 'em by that time and was just sitting quietly in the window, thanking God for every minute as they stayed where she could see what they was doing. But when they had finished the jam, they went in the house and was so deathly quiet she was scared to fits. She thought maybe they was setting fire to something. But after a while they begun to bang on the piano, and when she was half crazy over the noise, she looked towards the door, and there was the key poked under. She made a jump for the key, and it was jerked back by a piece of string. And her own string at that. Then she was called to the window by Gringer yelling, and while she was trying to hear what he had to say--the piano jangling worse than ever--they opened the door suddenly and bundled Bocaj into the room and then locked the door again.

"The baby was just woke up and hungry, and it was a pretty kettle of fish. She says she made up her mind then and there to quit that house and adopt Bocaj. She says she saw as there was no use trying to reform the rest; but Bocaj was so little and helpless, and nothing in her heart made her feel as he couldn't be raised to be practical. She went to work and fed him crackers soaked in boiling water while she packed her trunk. And when her cousin came home, she was sitting with her bonnet on ready to go. Her cousin just naturally felt awful. She wanted to call it a joke; but Mrs. Sperrit is a woman whose feelings isn't lightly took in vain. She left, and she took Bocaj with her. She telegraphed Mr. Sperrit, and he met her at the train. He was some disappointed because he'd forgotten about the baby's name and thought from reading it in the telegraph that she was bringing back a monkey. Seems Mr. Sperrit has always wanted a monkey, and she wouldn't have one. But now she says he can have a monkey or anything else, if he'll only stay practical. She says she doesn't believe she could ever live with any one as wasn't practical, after this experience."

Susan paused, Mrs. Macy and Gran'ma Mullins rose to go to their kitchens and get suppers for their guests. When they had gone, Susan, having Mrs. Lathrop alone, eased a troubled conscience.

"Oh, Mrs. Lathrop," she confided, "do you remember me saying the other evening I'd had a letter from Jathrop?"

Mrs. Lathrop suddenly stopped rocking. "Yes--yes, Susan," she answered eagerly. "I--"

"Well, I didn't have one. It was just as everybody in this community has got their minds fixed on Jathrop's being wild about me, so I felt to mention a letter, and I shall go on mentioning getting a letter from him whenever the spirit moves me."

"Why, Susan--!" exclaimed Mrs. Lathrop.

"It doesn't hurt him a _tall_," said Susan Clegg with calm decision, "and it saves me from being asked questions. And you know as well as I do, Mrs. Lathrop, that I can have him if I want him."

Mrs. Lathrop sat open-mouthed, dumb.

"If I don't have him, it'll be because I don't want him," added Miss Clegg with dignity. "So it's no use your saying one other word, Mrs. Lathrop."

And Mrs. Lathrop, thus adjured, refrained from further speech.

X

SUSAN CLEGG DEVELOPS IMAGINATION

"Far be it from me, Mrs. Lathrop," said Susan Clegg, returning from an early errand down-town and dropping in at Mrs. Macy's to find her friend still in her own room and rocking in her old-gold stationary rocker. It was now autumn, and to take the chill off the room an oil burner was brightly ablaze. "Far be it from me to say anything disrespectful of such a good Samaritan as your son Jathrop, but as we have it in the scriptures, he certainly does move in a mysterious way his neighbors to inform. It's mighty good of him to go to all the expense of building over my house in a way I'd never in this wide world have had it if I could 'a' understood those plans of that boy architect, and it may be--providing we escape earthquake, fire, blood, and famine--that I'll get into it once more before next summer, notwithstanding it's all of two months behind yours, you being his mother, Mrs. Lathrop, and me only your friend. But a early frost is sure to crack the plaster, and, seeing as the glass blowers has gone on a strike, there's no telling when they'll blow the panes for the windows. Just the same, kind and good as Jathrop is, he might have had more consideration for me as would this day have been his wife, if I'd felt to answer him with a three-letter word instead of a two, than to put me on the pillar of scorn before a community as has known me always as a scrupulous lover of the voracious truth."

"You don't--" began Mrs. Lathrop, in mild astonishment.

"Yes, I do," continued Susan, with growing indignation. "Jathrop has done his best to make me out a liar, and I don't know as I'll ever be able to hold my head up again. He's struck me in the tenderest spot he could strike me in, and not boldly neither, but in a skulking, underhand way that makes it all the bitterer pill to swallow."

"I can't see--" objected Mrs. Lathrop.

"No, nor me neither. But he did, and in no time everybody'll know it from Johnny, at the station, to Mrs. Lupey in Meadville, not forgettin' the poor demented over to the insane asylum. And it all comes of those letters I have been getting from Jathrop during the summer."

"But--"

"Yes, I know and you know there was no letters a _tall_. But everybody else, except you and me and the postmaster, believed I had a letter regular every week. Whenever I run short of subjects at the Sewing Society, I just fell back on my last letter from Jathrop and told them all about what he was doing in those islands. I'd read the book he sent, and I'd read it to good profit. There was some things as I didn't quite understand, of course, but on them I just put my own interpretations, and knowing Jathrop as I did, it was easy enough for me to figure out how he'd be most likely to act in a strange, barbaric land. The book didn't have a word to say about the costumes of the native tribes, but I'm not so ignorant as not to know how those South Sea Islanders never wear nothing more hamperin' than sea-shell earrings and necklaces of sharks' teeth; and I'd read, too, that foreign visitors, on account of the unbearable heat, was in the habit of adoptin' the native fashions in dress. When you get started makin' things up, there's no knowing just where you're likely as to end. It's so easy to go straight ahead and say just whatever you please that seems in any way interesting. And so, when Mrs. Fisher asked me one day whether I supposed there was any cannibals there, I said there was one cannibal tribe that was most ferocious and had appetites that there was no such thing as quenchin'. I said that in Jathrop's last letter he had written me about how this tribe had captured the cook off the yacht and that when they finally found his captors and defeated them in a desperate battle lasting three days, all that was found of the cook was two chicken croquettes."

"For gra--!" cried Mrs. Lathrop.

"That's what Mrs. Fisher said. Of course, with the cook eat up--all but what was in the two croquettes, that is,--Jathrop and his millionaire friends was a good deal put about. There wasn't a one of 'em as knew the first thing about cooking, and after the exercise of the three days' battle they was most awful hungry. And then, I says, quoting from the letter from Jathrop which never came, they had a piece of real luck, just as millionaires is always having. They had taken one prisoner, and by means of signs, not knowin' a word of the cannibal language, they discovered that the prisoner was the cook of the tribe. He pointed to the croquettes as a example of his handiwork, and Jathrop said that he never saw anything in the cookin' line that looked more toothsome than they did. So, of course they engaged the cannibal cook on the spot and carried him back to the yacht with 'em. Everything went well for a few days, but on a day when they had invited the chief of a friendly tribe to dinner, there was something as aroused their suspicions. The principal dish for the feast was, so far as they could make out from the cook's sign-language, a savory rabbit stew. Now as they had never seen or heard tell of a rabbit in the Bahamas, they was naturally curious to learn where the cook had managed to dig it up. He either couldn't or wouldn't tell. I says that Jathrop says you might 'a' thought that the cook was a thirty-second degree mason and that the origin of the rabbit was a thirty-second degree masonic secret. The millionaires gathered in council and discussed the question, pro and con, from every obtainable or imaginable angle. Then, just as they were about to adjourn without having reached any conclusion whatever, they rang for the cabin boy to fetch some liquid refreshment. But there wasn't no answer. And they might 'a' been ringing yet as to any good it would do. They never did see that cabin boy, and the only one to eat the savory rabbit stew was the visiting chief."

"I don't--" observed Mrs. Lathrop, rocking faster.

"Well, Mrs. Lathrop, you're right about that," Susan confirmed, loosening her shawl, for the oil-stove was rapidly lifting the room's temperature. "I don't see, myself, why anybody should ever have known any better, and nobody would have, if it hadn't been as Jathrop took it into his head to talk to a newspaper man at Atlantic City on about the same day as I had him missing the cabin boy and refusing a helping to the rabbit stew. Mr. Kimball showed me the paper as came from New York wrapped around a new ledger he just received by express. The reporter had written two columns and over about the 'Klondike Bonanza King,' and if Jathrop had set his mind to makin' me out a Ananias and a Saphira boiled into one, he couldn't have succeeded better. He hasn't been in the Bahamas a _tall_. The yacht started for there, but it went to Cuba instead, and he and his friends only stayed in Cuba a week. From there they went down to Panama and looked over the canal as far as it's gone. They spent the summer sailin' from one summer resort to another, and I must say I should think there was better ways of passin' the time than that. When it comes to eatin', I'd about as leave eat the dishes of a cannibal cook as eat things made of the salt water that people go bathin' in, and that's what they do at Atlantic City. The minister showed me some candy 'Liza Em'ly sent him from Atlantic City in July, and I know what I'm talkin' about, for it was printed on the paper around each piece. 'Salt-water Taffy.' Think of that! It's plain to be seen that they ain't got any fresh water there, or they wouldn't use salt. Jathrop and the other millionaires, I suppose, drink nothin' but wine, but the poor folks must drink salt water or go thirsty. I suppose it saves salt in seasonin', but I'd rather have my vituals unseasoned than have 'em salted with water that folks has swum in. They certainly ain't got no enterprise, that's sure. If they had they'd pipe water--fresh water--from somewheres. And if there's no place near enough to pipe it from, they'd build cisterns. But water's not the only thing as shows their shiftlessness. Our town isn't exactly a metropolis, but we got a few cement sidewalks. Atlantic City ain't got a one. I heard about that long ago. And in these days of progress, too! Nothing but a board walk on its principal street--nothing a _tall_."

"What did--?" asked Mrs. Lathrop.