Susan Clegg and Her Love Affairs

"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 reëstablished 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 tallAfter 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.

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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 tallBut 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 tallThe 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.

"He said a good deal more'n his prayers, I can tell you that.He said his object in going to the Bahamas, to which he never went, after all, was to look into the possibility of securin' a large tract of land there for the cultivation and growth of sisal.Now what under the sun would you suppose sisal was?I saw in the book that sisal was being grown in increasing quantities in the islands, and I just naturally supposed it was some sort of animal.It might of been buffalo, or it might of been guinea pigs, but when I spoke at the Sewing Society of how Jathrop had mentioned the great number of sisal, and Mrs. Allen says: 'What is sisal?' I just right then and there on the spur of the minute says: 'Why, don't you know? Sisal is a sort of small oxen striped like a zebra and spotted like a leopard.' And would you believe it, Mrs. Lathrop, when Mr. Kimball asked me that same question to-day, I said the very same thing—small oxen striped like a zebra and spotted like a leopard. 'That's what Mrs. Allen told me you said, Miss Clegg,' says he, 'but accordin' to the paper, Jathrop Lathrop don't quite agree with you.' I don't know, Mrs. Lathrop, I d'n know, I'm sure, why Jathrop should take pleasure in making me appear like a ignoramus, but there ain't no question about it that that's what he did when he gave that interview to that there reporter. 'What kind of animal is a sisal, then, Mr. Kimball?' I asked, and you can believe me my blood was boilin' in my veins. 'It ain't no animal a tall,' he says. 'It's hemp what they make ropes out of to hang murderers with. And the seeds they feed canaries on.' 'Well,' I says, 'that may be the reporter's sisal, but it ain't mine, and it ain't Jathrop's. The newspapers never get nothin' right nohow, but when it comes to reducin' cattle into rope and birdseed, they are certainly goin' one better on the Chicago pork packers.' In all my life I have never been a respecter of the untruth, but I know enough on the subject to tell a good lie when necessity calls upon me and to stick to it as long as it has an eyelid to hang by. But I will say this for your son Jathrop, Mrs. Lathrop, and that is that before he got done with that reporter, he didn't leave so much as a eyelash, let alone a lid. It wasn't only that he'd never been to those islands a tall, and I'd been tellin' everybody in town as how I'd had a letter from him there every week the whole summer through, but he must air his acquaintance with things on the islands just as if he'd been born and raised there.And it seems there ain't no natives within miles of the Bahamas, and hasn't been since Columbus and his people was there, goin' on fifteen hundred years ago. Columbus told 'em that he'd take 'em to the land where all their dead relatives and friends had gone to, a land flowin' with milk and honey, and he kept his word. Seems he shipped every last mother's son and daughter of 'em back to Spain with him, and left the islands bare for the next comers. It may have appeared a rather roundabout way for the native Bahamians to reach heaven and their departed folks, seeing as it led through hard work in the Spanish mines, but there ain't no question whatever that they every one got there in the end."

"You mean—" suggested Mrs. Lathrop.

"I mean that unless Lathrop or the reporter made it up, or the pair of 'em together, that nobody lives there now except whites and blacks, and there's not enough whites to make a nice shepherd's plaid out of the combination.But savagery, except for pirates, has never had any place there, and cannibalism is absolutely unknown. It's all very humiliating, and it'd 'a' been much better to let people ask me and never said nothing back a tallWhen people is in the dark, they've got to imagine for themselves, and as long as they don't tell what they imagine to others, no piece in a newspaper can never make 'em blush.I can tell you it's learnt me a lesson as I won't soon forget.I'll never get over the way Mr. Kimball looked at me when he said as how sisal was hemp; and me thinking all the time it was a animal when it was a herb.Well, Mrs. Lathrop, it's a ill wind that don't chill the shorn lamb.I'm that chilled that I feel I never shall talk again.I'll never say black is black or white is white until I've looked at the color twice with my glasses on.Accuracy is the best policy, I says, from this day henceforth."

"You might—" began Mrs. Lathrop sympathetically.

"That's true, too.I might have known that it didn't sound true to be getting letters every week from a man who went away to the Klondike and never sent his mother so much as a picture postal card in all the years he was there. But then, too, you've got to consider the kind of folks as you're telling things to, and with all due respect to the ladies of the Sewing Society, from Mrs. Allen to Gran'ma Mullins, they're not over-burdened with the kind of intellect as can add two and two and get the same answer twice in succession. There wasn't a one of 'em as thought of that, or they'd 'a' said it straight out, without once considering my feelings. And I'll say this much for you, Mrs. Lathrop: you're not the best housekeeper I ever see, and you're about a match for Mrs. Sperrit's cousin when it comes to being practical, but you have got some brains, and I'd no more think of trying to deceive you than I'd think of trying to deceive Judge Fitch when he'd got a big retainer to get the truth out of me."

Mrs. Lathrop leaned down and turned out the oil burner.

"Was that—?"

"No, it wasn't all. There was something else that has set me all of a flutter. If it wasn't as you never can tell whether a newspaper is voracious or just bearing false witness, I'd certainly feel as if Jathrop was playing fast and loose with my affections. I can remember, and you can remember, too, when the freedom of the press didn't mean freedom to make a Pike's Peak out of a ant hill. But in these days there's no telling whether, when we read of a poor soul being attacked by a wild beast, it's a jungle tiger or just a pet yellow kitten. Folks would rather read about the tiger than the kitten, and so the papers give 'em what they want without any regard for the real facts a tallElijah Doxey, who's a real editor if there ever was one, and knows all about the paper business, says that the newspaper, like everything else, has to keep abreast of the times or go to the wall, and that since people in these days 'ld rather read fiction than history, it stands to reason a paper can't stand in its own light by sticking always to cold commonplace facts."

"Did the—?"Mrs. Lathrop attempted mildly to question.

"I don't know, I d'n know, I'm sure, Mrs. Lathrop.But the interview with Jathrop wasn't all interview, by no means.It said a lot about his party, and it mentioned each of the millionaires as was in it.Seems the interview was given on one of those Atlantic City board walks, and it was given—from what on earth do you think, Mrs. Lathrop?From a wheel chair.Jathrop in a wheel chair!Think of that!And not alone, either.'Beside him,' wrote the interviewer, 'was the beautiful, dark-eyed Cuban señora who, rumor says, is soon to become his bride.'My lands!If it hadn't been for Mr. Kimball's apple barrel, I certainly would have dropped.It would 'a' been bad enough if they was both strong and well, but to think of Jathrop being too weak to walk and going to marry a foreigner no more robust than himself.You can't imagine the shock it give me.For a minute I was clean speechless, and I'd 'a' been dumb yet, I do believe, if it wasn't as I begun to figure things out in my head and got sight of a ray of hope. Just as like as not, I says, Jathrop was suffering from the sudden change of climate,—from the Klondike to Cuba seems to me a pretty rigorous switch for any constitution,—and the Cuban woman was more'n likely his trained nurse fetched from the island. Either that or the woman was just recovering from a illness, and Jathrop got in to ride with her out of pure kindness of heart. Then, too, I remembered that: 'rumor says,' and cheered right up. Rumor never told the truth yet, as far as I know, and it's not in reason to believe the shameless thing is going to reform in these degenerate days. Jathrop may be going to marry the señora, I don't say he isn't, and I don't say he is. But before I believe it, I've got to have some better authority than what rumor says. He's steered clear of wives in the Klondike, and he's steered clear of 'em in other places, and I don't see as there's any reason to think his steering apparatus come to grief while he was in Cuba. 'How's Susan Clegg?' That was what he wrote in the first letter you'd had from him in a dog's age, Mrs. Lathrop, and it showed pretty clear to me who he was thinking of while engaged in the steering operation."

"You don't think—" Mrs. Lathrop began distressfully.

"No man as was seriously sick, Mrs. Lathrop, ever talked two whole long newspaper columns to a reporter.You can bank on that.He was well enough to make me out the king of prevaricators, and it took some strength and a good deal of attention to small details to do it, and as the Cuban señora never said one word in all that time, I can't think as she is cutting any figure eights in his affairs.Consequently, I don't believe it'll pay either of us to do any great lot of worrying."

"If—" Mrs. Lathrop attempted once more to interpolate.

"That's just what I told Mr. Kimball.'If Mrs. Lathrop could only see this paper,' I says, 'I know she'd be delighted.' It stands to reason as a mother must be proud of a son who, after having no more sense than to take a kicking cow for a bad debt, goes to the Klondike and comes back a millionaire; but it stands to reason, too, that she'd be more proud of him to get two columns of free advertising in a New York paper that can sell its columns to the department stores for real money. Well, I asked him for the paper just to show you, and though he didn't feel to part with it, just the same he did in the end, and I carried it away in triumph."

"You've brought—"

"No, I haven't.I'm sorry to disappoint you, Mrs. Lathrop, more sorry than I am to disappoint Mr. Kimball in not being able to return it, but the truth is I lost it on the way home."

"Lost—"

"Every last scrap of it.And I can't say as it was altogether accidental either.As Shakespeare says: 'Self-protection is the best part of valor.' If that paper was ever to get before the Sewing Society, my character would be stripped off me to the last rag. Mr. Kimball can say what was in it, but without the paper itself, he'll have a hard time proving anything, and my word when it comes to a dispute is as good as his and a thousand times better."

Mrs. Lathrop leaned forward and for a moment stopped rocking.

"You—" she said quietly but tensely.

"Tore it into small bits," returned Susan, rising, "and scattered them to the winds of heaven.There's a paper trail all the way from the square to Mrs. Macy's gate."

Mrs. Lathrop resumed her rocking and relapsed into silence.

Susan Clegg, laying her finger to her lips as a parting warning, went quietly out.

---

XI

SUSAN CLEGG AND THE PLAYWRIGHT

"Well," said Miss Clegg to her dear friend in the early fall of that same year, while they still waited under alien roofs the completion of their own made-over houses, "the men who write the Sunday papers and say that when you look at the world with a impartial eye in this century you can't but have hopes of women some day developing into something, surely would know they spoke the truth if they could see Elijah Doxey now."

"But Eli—" expostulated Mrs. Lathrop.

"No, of course not.But 'Liza Em'ly is, and it's her I'm talking about.She was up to see me this afternoon, and she says she'll spare no money nowhere.The trained nurse is to stay with him right along forever if he likes, and the two can have her automobile and ride or walk or do anything, without thinking once what it costs. There was a doctor up from the city again yesterday, and that makes four visits at a hundred a visit. But 'Liza Em'ly says even if Elijah hadn't anything of his own, she'd pay all the bills sooner'n think anything that could be done was being left out. It's a pretty sad case, Mrs. Lathrop, and this last doctor says he never see a sadder. He said nothing more could be done right now, for there really is nothing in this community to remind Elijah that he ever wrote a play, if they only could get those clippings from the newspapers away from him. But that's just what they can't do. He keeps looking them over, and then such a look of agony comes into his eyes,—and Elijah was never one to bear pain as you must know, remembering him with the colic,—and he clasps his hands and shakes his head, and—well, Mrs. Lathrop, Elijah just wasn't strong enough to write a play, and some one as was stronger ought to of restrained him right in the first of it."

"He—" said Mrs. Lathrop pityingly.

"Yes, that's it," confirmed Susan, "and oh, it's awful to take a bright young promising life like his and wreck it completely like that!To see Elijah walking about with a trained nurse and those clippings at his age is surely one of the most touching sights as this town'll ever see.'Liza Em'ly says she offered a thousand dollars to any newspaper as would print one good notice, 'cause the doctors say just one good notice might turn the whole tide of his brain.But the newspapers say if they printed one good notice of such a play, the Pure Food Commission would have 'em up for libel within a week, and they just don't dare risk it.This last doctor says he can't blame Elijah for going mad, 'cause he knows a little about the stage through being in love with a actress once, and he says he wasn't treated fair.He says play-writing is not like any other kind of writing, and Elijah wasn't prepared for the great difference. Seems all words on the stage mean something they don't mean in the dictionary, and that makes it very hard for a mere ordinary person to know what they're saying if they say anything a tall. And then, too, Elijah never grasped that the main thing is to keep the gallery laughing, even if the two-dollar people have tears running down their cheeks. And you can't write for the stage nowadays without you keep folks laughing the whole time. Elijah never thought about the laughing, because his play was a tragedy like Hamlet, only with Hamlet left out. For the lady is dead in the play, and her ghost is all that's left of her. But 'Liza Em'ly told me to-day as his trouble came right in the start, for the people who look plays over no sooner looked Elijah's over before they took hold of it and fixed it. And they kept on fixing it till it was Hamlet with nobody but Hamlet left in. And then, so as to manage the laughs, they dressed everybody like chickens if they turned back-to. So that while the audience was weeping, if any one on the stage turned 'round, they went off into shrieks of laughter. 'Liza Em'ly says they never told Elijah about the chicken feathers, and the opening night was the first he knew about that little game, for he was laid up for ever so long before then. He got all used up in the first part of the rehearsals; for it seems you can only have a theater to rehearse in at times when even the people who sweep it don't feel to be sweeping. And so they always rehearse from one to six in the morning. And Elijah naturally wasn't used to that. But they'd had trouble even before then; for right from the start there was a pretty how-d'ye-do over the plot. Seems Elijah wanted his own plot and his own people in his own play, and they had a awful time getting it through his head as it's honor enough to have your own play, and it's only unreasonable to stick out for your own plot and your own people too. 'Liza Em'ly says they had a awful time with him over it all, and there was a time when he felt so bad over giving up his plot and his people that any one ought to have seen right there as he'd never be strong enough to stand all the rest of what was surely coming. 'Liza Em'ly didn't tell me the whole of the rest what come, but Mr. Kimball told me that what was one great strain on Elijah, right through to the hour he begun to scream, was that the leading lady fell in love with him and used to have him up at all hours to fix up her part, and then kiss him. And Elijah didn't want to fix up her part, and he hated to be kissed. But they told him the part must be fixed up to suit her, and that the kisses didn't matter, because they was only little things after all.

"He was wading along through the mire as best he could, when all of a sudden it come out as she had one husband as she'd completely overlooked and never divorced.He turned up most unexpectedly and come at Elijah about the kisses.Then they told Elijah he couldn't do a better thing by his play than to let the man shoot him two or three times in places as would let him be carried pale and white to a box for the opening night; and then, between the last two acts, marry the lady and let it be in all the morning papers. You can maybe think, Mrs. Lathrop, how such a idea would come to the man as is to be shot. But, oh, my, they didn't make nothing of Elijah's feelings in the matter. Nothing a tallThey just set right to work and called a meeting of the play manager and the stage manager and the leading lady's manager and Elijah's manager, and the man who really does the managing.They all got together, and they drew up a diagram as to where Elijah was to be hit, and a contract for him and the leading lady to sign as they wouldn't marry anybody else in the meantime.And if it hadn't been for 'Liza Em'ly, the deal, as they called it, would have gone straight through.For Elijah was so dead beat by this time that about all he was fit for was to sit on a electric battery with a ice bag on his head, and look up words in a stage dictionary and then cross 'em out of his play."

"Oh, I—" cried Mrs. Lathrop.

"That's just what 'Liza Em'ly said she said," rejoined Susan Clegg."I tell you, Mrs. Lathrop, 'Liza Em'ly is no fool since her book's gone into the thirty-seventh edition, and that's a fact.She told me to-day as when she realized the man she loved—for 'Liza Em'ly really loves Elijah; any one can see that just by looking at the trained nurse she's got him—was being murdered alive, she went straight up and took a hand in the matter herself.I guess she had a pretty hard time, for the leading lady wouldn't hear to changing any of what they call the routing, and said if Elijah wasn't shot and married according to the signed agreement, she wouldn't play.And when a leading lady won't play, then is when you find out what Shakespeare really did write for, according to 'Liza Em'ly.For a little they was all running this way and that way, just beside themselves, with the leading lady in the Adirondacks and two detectives watching her husband. And the man as was painting the scenery took a overdose of chloral and went off with all his ideas in his head, and that unexpected trouble brought 'em all together again. The husband came down off his high horse and said he'd take five per cent, of the net—Don't ask me what that means, for Mr. Dill don't know either—and the littlest chorus girl and go to Europe. And he said, too, as he'd sign a paper first releasing Elijah from all claim on account of his wife. So they all signed, and he sailed. He was clear out to sea before they discovered as he had another wife as he'd never divorced, so the leading lady could of married Elijah, after all. Well, that was a pretty mess, with a husband as had no claim on nobody gone off to Europe with five percent of the net. The stage manager and Elijah's manager took the Mauretania and started right after him, for when it comes to five per cent. on any kind of stage thing, Mr. Kimball says, any monkeying counts up so quick that even hiring a yacht is nothing if you want to catch that five per cent. in time. So they was off, one in the captain's room and the other in the bridal suite, while 'Liza Em'ly was down in Savannah getting local color to patch up the scenery, leaving Elijah totally unprotected on his battery with his ideas.

"But Elijah wasn't to be left in peace even now.Seems they was having a investigation into the poor quality of the electricity in the city, and a newspaper opened a referendum and made 'em double the power.The company was so mad, they didn't give no warning to a soul, but just slid up the needle from 100 to 200 right then and there; and one of the results was they blew Elijah nearly through the ceiling.Nothing in the world but the ice bag saved him from having his skull caved in, and the specialist thinks he's got a concussion in his sinus right now.Poor Elijah!"

"But—?"Mrs. Lathrop queried.

"They took him to the hospital, and from then on to the opening night he had nothing to do with his own play. The leading lady married the stage manager till she got the stage to suit her, and then she married the man who really does the managing until she got everything else to suit her. Next, without letting any of the others know, she married Elijah's manager secretly, so that when poor Elijah in the hospital thought he was looking at his manager, he was really nursing a viper in his bosom. When 'Liza Em'ly came back with her local color, they told her they didn't want it because they was going to have the camping-out scene in the parlor, and play the people all liked a joke. When she went to a lawyer to protest, the lawyer looked through all Elijah's contracts and said Elijah had never stipulated as the camping-out scene should be in the woods. So 'Liza Em'ly paid him fifty dollars and come away a good deal wiser than she went.

"Then come the opening night, and Mr. Kimball says he shall never forget that opening night as long as he lives.You know he bought himself one of those hats as when you sit on 'em just gets a better shape, and then he went up to see his own nephew's own play. Seems he sat on his hat in Elijah's own box, but he says Elijah was looking very bad even before the curtain went up. Seems Elijah didn't expect much, but he did have just a little hope that here and there in spots he'd see some of his own play. But the hope was very faint. After the curtain went up, it kept getting fainter. Of course Elijah meant it for a tragedy and called it Millicent; and seeing the title changed to Milly Tilly was a hard blow to him right in the beginning. Seems the woman poisoned herself because she was unhappy, and after she's dead, she remembers there was some poison left in the bottle, and so she wants to warn the family. It was a very nice plot, Polly White thinks, and Elijah was wild over it 'cause there's never been a plot used like it. But of course his idea was as it should be took seriously. Do you wonder then, Mrs. Lathrop, that the first time in the play when one of the play actors turned round he nearly died? Mr. Kimball says he nearly died himself. He says he never saw anything so funny as those chicken backs in all his life. He says people was just laying any way and every way in their seats, wailing to stop, so they could stop too. He says he was laughing fit to kill himself when all of a sudden he looked up to see Elijah, and he says nothing ever give him such a chill as Elijah's then-and-there expression. Seems Elijah was just staring at the leading lady as was flapping her wings and playing crow, while the gallery was pounding and yelling like mad. And then Elijah suddenly shot out of the box and round behind the scenes and vanished completely."

Mrs. Lathrop gasped and lifted her hands, but no word issued from between her lips.

"Well, of course we know now what happened, but nobody did then.Nobody was expecting him on the stage, before the scenes or behind 'em, and Mr. Kimball didn't know where he was gone. So it was the end of the piece before he was really missed. Then they begun to hunt, and no Elijah high or low nowhere. You know how the papers was full of it, and there would have been more about it, only Mr. Kimball and 'Liza Em'ly supposed it was just advertising. Even 'Liza Em'ly thought it was the wrong kind of advertising and that the leading lady had seen Elijah's face and thought it was better to kidnap him until the play got settled down her way. Seems if you can keep a play going any kind of a way for a little while, you can't never change it afterwards, no matter what you've put in it. It's all most remarkable business, a play is. But anyway, wherever he was, they all moved on to the next town anyhow. 'Liza Em'ly and Mr. Kimball went right with them to protect Elijah's interest, as it was plain to be seen from where Elijah's manager was sleeping, where his interest was now. And as soon as they begun to unload the scenery, the afternoon of that day, whatever do you suppose? There was Elijah, just where he'd fell when he tripped over the first scene. They'd carted him off in the triangle that unfolds into a grand piano, right along to the baggage-car, where they'd piled the whole of his play on top of him, ending up even with the chicken feathers."

"Great heav—!"cried Mrs. Lathrop.

"So he said," interrupted Miss Clegg."But there was no help for it.Seems while you're playing Act III.of a play, Act II.is getting packed up, and Act I.is already in the train.So Elijah was all packed and pretty flat before they even missed him, and most crazy before he was found.Well, and so to try and soothe him they took him to the theater that night again, and the leading lady, when she looked at him and saw how awful weak he looked, sent him in a new idea she'd got, which was to let her have a poster done of him packed up in the scenery.Then every night he could sit in a box and at a certain sign give a yell and shoot out.Then she'd make a speech about his having been in the scenery car all the night before, and being naturally kind of excited. She said it would make the play draw like mad. Well, Elijah wouldn't consent to that a tallAnd then again they worked with him and talked to him and called him a fool till he really begun to get awfully scared.They had in all the managers together, and they wouldn't let him consult any one.Seems they just all sat looking at his forehead just over his nose where you hypnotize people, and he kept getting more and more scared.Seems he told his nurse, during what they call a lucid interval, that you can talk all you please about will power—and it may be true of people in general—but no rule ever made on earth can possibly apply to any one who has just written a play.There's something about writing a play as takes all the marrow out of your bones and the blood out of your body.And he says he wasn't no more responsible when he signed that contract to go mad in a box every evening and at least one matinée every week than a grasshopper.He says his one and only thought by that time was to get away from 'em and make a break to where he'd never hear about his play again. But after he'd signed, they never let him out of sight. They locked him up in a dressing-room with the leading lady's pet mouse until after the performance, and then they took him and introduced him to two very big managers as was engaged to do nothing except manage him nights in the box.

"Well, you know the rest, Mrs. Lathrop.He really did go mad, then, and we've got him here now helpless, getting rich almost as fast as 'Liza Em'ly, and crazy as a loon.I declare, it's one of the saddest cases I ever see.I don't know whatever can be done.They say as fast as he gets sane, the play'll surely drive him crazy again, so I don't see what 'Liza Em'ly will do.She set with me the whole afternoon and talked very nicely about it all.To see her here, you'd never think she could act the way Mrs. Macy and Mrs. Fisher tell about.I can see she's got a little airy, and she says she misses her maid and her secretary more than she ever tells the minister's family; but on the whole I like her very much, and her devotion to Elijah is most beautiful. She says he's the one love of her life, and she shall marry him if ever he gets sense enough to know what he's doing. If he doesn't, she says she shall take a yacht and sail with him and write books until he dies. She says they can land once in a while to get their provisions and their royalties. But she says the only possible salvation for Elijah, as things are now, will be to stay where he never sees a car to remind him of scenery, or a house to remind him of a stage, for years and years to come. I asked her what she really thought of his play, and she said she thought the leading lady was just right and very clever, only Elijah was too sensitive a nature to understand little artistic touches like the chicken feathers. She says folks are too tired nowadays to be bothered to laugh. They want to be made to laugh without even thinking. She says Elijah is a earnest nature as likes to work his laughs out very carefully and conscientious; but the leading lady understands getting the same effect, only a million times quicker, with chicken feathers and divorces. 'Liza Em'ly says the leading lady is very fair according to her own idea of fairness. She didn't have no money to put in the play, so she agreed to put in four divorces and one scandal as her part of the stock. Now the play's only been on a month, and she's paid up everything except one divorce and the scandal; and she's done so well they're trying to work up some scheme to let her pay both those off at the same time. The play is going fine. They print columns about Elijah and his madness, and the whole company is learning to crow together at the end of the second act. Every night they take out a little of what Elijah wrote, and the main manager says that there'll soon be nothing of Elijah left in except the ghost, and the ghost of the bottle, and the agreement to pay Elijah his royalties. And according to the main manager's views, that's being pretty fair and square with Elijah."

"Do you—?"queried Mrs. Lathrop.

"Well, I don't know," answered Miss Clegg, "I really d'n know what to say.I'm kind of dumb did over both 'Liza Em'ly and Elijah, for you know as well as I do, Mrs. Lathrop, that nobody ever looked for those kind of things from them."

"Shall—?"asked Mrs. Lathrop.

"Yes, if it ever comes where I can," responded Miss Clegg, "I shall like to see it very much."

"Did—?"pressed Mrs. Lathrop.

"Oh, yes, I asked her," Susan admitted, "I asked her fair and square.I says: ''Liza Em'ly, there's no use denying as you've used real people in this community in your book, and now I want to know who is Deacon Tooker?'She said Deacon Tooker was just the book itself.She seemed more amused than there was any particular sense in; but I thought if anything could give her a good laugh, it wasn't me would begrudge her. There's this to be said for our young folks when they do get rich, Mrs. Lathrop, and that is that they're nice about it, and it makes every one feel kindly towards 'em. Every one feels kindly towards Jathrop, and every one feels kindly towards 'Liza Em'ly, and as for poor, dear Elijah—Well!"

The tone was expressive enough.Mrs. Lathrop shook her head sadly.Then both were silent.

---

XII

SUSAN CLEGG'S DISAPPEARANCE

The "building-over" of Susan Clegg and her friend, Mrs. Lathrop, was completed during the second week in December, and in less than twenty-four hours they were once more established in their own dwellings, surrounded by their own goods and chattels.For only the briefest space, however, did Miss Clegg remain where she was put.Then she hurried through the passageway afforded by the connecting pergola and burst excitedly into her neighbor's brand new kitchen in the very center of which sat Mrs. Lathrop in her old-gold-plush stationary rocker, calmly surveying her domiciliary spick-and-spanness.On her lap lay a just-opened letter; but for once the scrupulously observing Miss Clegg failed to observe.She was too full of fresh trials.

"I d'n know whatever sins I committed in this world, Mrs. Lathrop," she began, dropping into the nearest chair and facing her friend in an upright, a little bent forward attitude that was clearly pugnacious, "that I should have these things visited upon me. The Lord knows, just the same as you do, as I've always been a good and pure woman, loving my neighbors like myself and doing all my Christian duties as I was give to see 'em. When I was tore up from my home by the roots and cast wilted and faded upon Gran'ma Mullins, where the infant memories of Hiram certainly wasn't calculated to do no reviving, I made the best of it. I made the best of Lucy and a dog with a cold nose, too; and I bore up with courage and no complaint under Mrs. Allen and her Persian religion. And I did it all to please you, Mrs. Lathrop, and your fool of a son, Jathrop, whose money, it's my opinion, has acted on him in a most injurious way. He never had much sense, as you yourself know, but now he ain't got no sense a tall."

"I don't—" Mrs. Lathrop started gently to protest.

"Well, I do," rejoined Susan Clegg spiritedly; "and if you don't, you ought to. Anyhow, I mean to tell you, if it's the last act of my life. Anybody as has any sense a tall must have seen that building over was just a mite removed from building new; and what's new never did go with what's old, and it never will. If we was to be built over, we ought to have been all built over or let alone. Jathrop's built the houses over, but he ain't built over the furnishings, and the built-over houses and the not-built-over furniture and carpets and window shades and pots and kettles and pans and china and linen and everything else don't agree and just naturally can't and never can. They're fighting now like sixty, and they'll go on fighting the longer they're kept together. My house was restful and peaceful before, but now it's like a circus with all the wild animals let loose. And I can tell you this, Mrs. Lathrop; my things is getting the worst of it. Why, before they went to storage at Mr. Shores', they was in the best repair you ever see, and now it would make your heart ache to look at 'em. They've aged a century at least during the summer. They're wrinkled and halt and lame and blind, and the new paper on the walls and the new polish on the floors and the new paint on the woodwork is making 'em look sicker and sicker every minute. If there's a society for the prevention of cruelty to furniture and other household goods, it ought to put Jathrop Lathrop in prison. I feel so sorry for those poor tables and chairs and bedsteads and all the rest of 'em as I could cry my eyes out this very minute. There's one walnut, haircloth sofa as Father laid on before he was took to his bed as is pitiful to behold. It looks sicker than Father did even in his last hours, and I wouldn't be surprised any minute to see it just turn over all of itself and give up the ghost. And everything has on such a reproachful look it's more than human nature can bear to face it. If I'd ever thought as being built over would of come to this, I'd of gone on my knees and worked 'em to the bare bones before I'd of put up with it."

Mrs. Lathrop continued to rock in silence.

"Still, there's no cloud, however black, as hasn't got some silk in its lining, and the silk in this is the clock as Father gave Mother, which was supposed to be marble and wasn't.Much as I hated that clock, I couldn't have borne to see its agonies when set on by the new fireplace below, and the pink and gold wall paper behind, and the roses and cupids in the cornish above.It must just of shriveled in shame instead of going out in glorious flight, as it did when I set it flying at the end of the bed-slat.Lord knows, though, Mrs. Lathrop, that's a small thing to be thankful for; and it's the only thing.I haven't begun yet to tell you all.And I don't intend to.There's a limit to my temper, and if I once got started, there's no saying where I'd end.But there's one thing more as I can't hold in, and it's the thing as was marked on the plans: 'But.Pan.'I never did understand why I should be give a separate room to keep butter pans in, seeing as I ain't got no cow, let alone no dairy. And even if I had, why I should keep my butter pans or my milk pans either in a little alley-way between the kitchen and the dining-room, just where the heat and smells could get at 'em from one side and the flies from both, not to mention the added footsteps put on me journeying from the stove to the dinner table. You can see for yourself, Mrs. Lathrop, there's no sense in it, whatever. But I'd never say a word about it, if that was all. But it ain't all. It's the littlest part. For Jathrop's cruelty hasn't stopped with torturing the furniture. It's clear he couldn't be satisfied till he fixed up a trap as sooner or later would hit me square in the face and break my nose. At both ends of his 'But. Pan.' he's had hung doors as swing, and springs on 'em to make 'em swing hard and deadly. What either one of those swinging doors might do to my features, let alone to the pudding or stew I might be carrying, it isn't in mortal tongue to express. If I could find one thing as was right in the whole house, I'd be fair and square enough to overlook the others; but there ain't to my mind a single solitary betterment. There's glass knobs on all the doors as will show every finger mark, and will keep me busy wiping from dawn to dark. The old brown knobs never showed nothing and didn't never have to be thought of, let alone polished. It's always been my idea as a cupboard was a place to shut things up in out of sight, and here if he hasn't gone and put glass doors on the one in the corner of the dining room, so as every one can see just what's meant to be hid. It's clear to be seen he's crazy on the subject of glass, which I ain't and never have been. And I don't like the way he's stinted things as is necessary and put all the money in things as had better been left out. Necessities before everything is my motto. What use, I'd like to know, is that cupid and rose cornish? But he puts that there just to catch dust and leaves out the whole of one parlor wall. If you'll believe me, Mrs. Lathrop, there's not a hair or hide of a wall between my entry hall and my parlor. Nothing but a pair of white posts as most people use on their piazzas. How I'm ever going to keep that parlor dark I don't see; for he's got glass over the front door and on both sides of it, and no shutters to keep the sun out. He's built in both the kitchen stove and the ice box, and for the life of me, I can't find no reasonable way of taking the ashes out of the one or the water out of the other. The builder says the ashes dump into a place in the cellar and the water from the ice drains down a pipe underneath the house. But I don't like neither plan. The drip from a ice box is a very cheering sound, I think, and with hot ashes going down cellar where you can't see 'em, I'll be in deadly fear of the house going up in smoke while I'm dreaming in my bed. The long and the short of it is, Mrs. Lathrop, I feel as I have been assaulted and robbed. Jathrop's took away my home and left me a house as isn't a home to me and never can be. And as far as I can see, he's done the same to you, which is ten thousand times worse, you being his mother."

"I—" began Mrs. Lathrop, taking up the letter from her lap so that at last it was forced upon Susan's observance.

"From him, I suppose," Miss Clegg instantly concluded, reaching for it."If he's got anything to say in his defence, I'm sure I'd delight to read it.But no matter what he says, he can't undo to me what he's done to me.I'll never feel the same towards Jathrop, your son or not your son, Mrs. Lathrop, as long as I live."

Mrs. Lathrop passed the letter to Miss Clegg.Like all of Jathrop's letters, it was brief and to the point.He announced that he would spend Christmas with his mother in her rebuilt home and would bring with him a friend as his guest.Susan read it over twice, turning the page each time, evidently in hope of finding an enlightening postscript.

"Well, of all things!"she exclaimed, as she passed the letter back to her friend. "Coming to see his work of destruction and going to bring her with him!"

"He don't—" Mrs. Lathrop endeavored to explain.

"He don't, because he don't dare; but there's no question what he means.He's bringing the señora.And he wouldn't bring her if it wasn't that he's going to marry her.Even you must see that.And if there was ever a insult multiplied by perjury, Jathrop's done it in that action.It's a good thing he didn't ask: 'How's Susan Clegg?'this time, as he did the time he was coming back from the Klondike.For I don't believe I could ever have stood that.All I can say, Mrs. Lathrop, is as I'm sorry for you from the soles of my feet up.You'll never in the world be able to get up a Christmas dinner as will please any señora, you can take my word on that.And not to please her will be a bad beginning with a señora as is to be your future daughter-in-law.Señoras don't care shucks for turkey and mince pie.They're not used to 'em and likely to get indigestion from 'em, and think what it would mean to Jathrop, let alone to her, if she should be carried off by a acute attack right here in your new, built-over house, at the dinner table. He'd blame it on you, and like as not she'd haunt you the rest of your living days. No, sir. You've got to give her Spanish omelets with lots of red peppers in 'em, and everything else Creole style, which means all he't up with tabasco sauce fit to burn out your insides. It's eating like that as makes those Spaniards and Cubans so dark colored you can't tell 'em from mulattoes. The peppers and the tabasco sauce bakes 'em brown on the outside, after leaving 'em all scorched and parched within."

For once, however, Susan Clegg was wrong in her deduction.Jathrop arrived in a red automobile on the day before Christmas, with a chauffeur in bear-skins driving, and a guest in sealskin beside him.But the guest was not the señora.It was one of Jathrop's millionaire friends who, Jathrop said, could buy and sell him twenty times over. He was a small man with a bald head and a red beard and old enough to be Jathrop's father.

Miss Clegg viewed the arrival from her bedroom window and was so glad it wasn't the señora that she at once set about baking extra doughnuts and mince pie to contribute to the festivities of the morrow.This occupied her until supper time.Then she made a hurried meal, washed her one plate and cup and saucer, and loaded down with her thank offering, flitted through the pergola and in at Mrs. Lathrop's kitchen door.The kitchen was empty, but voices penetrating from the dining room told her that her friend and her visitors were still at table.Being a trifle nervous and unable to sit quietly, she began at once to put the disordered kitchen into some degree of order, purely for the sake of occupation.

She had just finished washing and scouring the pots and pans and was flushing the waste-pipe of Mrs. Lathrop's new porcelain sink with lye-water so strong that her eyes ran tears from the fumes, when the voices growing more and more audible told her that Jathrop was leading his mother and his guest toward the kitchen. She just had time hurriedly to dry her hands on the roller towel when they appeared.

"Well, well," exclaimed Jathrop, in apparent surprise, "if here ain't our old friend, Susan Clegg!"

There is no question that Miss Clegg was slightly flustered at thus being taken unawares, but she recovered herself promptly, and shook hands cordially with Jathrop and not less cordially with the little millionaire, whom he introduced as Mr. Kettlewell.And Mr. Kettlewell was cordiality itself.Everybody sat down, right there in the kitchen and talked for a full hour, and in the course of the talk, Jathrop told Susan that he had arranged with a department store in New York to let her have whatever she needed for her built-over house and charge the same to his account.She could select the things from the firm's catalogue, or go to the city at his expense and pick out the actual articles. It was his Christmas present to his mother's and his own oldest friend. In conclusion, Jathrop joined with his mother in an invitation to Susan to take Christmas dinner with them; and Mr. Kettlewell smilingly begged her, for his sake, not to refuse. Altogether Susan had the pleasantest evening she had experienced in years, and the next morning, while Jathrop and Mr. Kettlewell were off in the car after evergreens with which to decorate the two houses, she ran over with the express purpose of telling Mrs. Lathrop so.

"Jathrop mayn't have much judgment when it comes to selecting architects," she began, "nor again when it comes to selecting servants, as was proved by his bringing that Hop Loo all the way from the Klondike.Nor again, neither, when it comes to wives, if it's a real fact that he's going to marry a brown-baked señora; but there's no getting away from the fact that he's a king in choosing his men friends.I've seen men in my life of all sorts and descriptions, from the minister to the blacksmith, but I ain't never see before such a handsome, high-minded, superior gentleman as Jathrop's friend, Mr. Kettlewell. I never thought much of bald-headed men before, but his head is so white and shiny, it's a pleasure to look at it. And I always just hated a red beard; but Mr. Kettlewell's beard is of a different red. It's a nice, warm, comforting red as makes you feel as cosy as the glow of a red-hot stove when the thermometer's down around zero. I can't say either, Mrs. Lathrop, as I wasn't more or less prejudiced against men as never rightly grew up, but stopped in the women's sizes. But there's a something about Mr. Kettlewell's proportions as gives you the idea he's really taller than he seems. And there's only one thing to compare his voice to. It's milk and honey. My lands, what a sweet, clear-rolling, liquid voice that Mr. Kettlewell has!"

"Ja—" began Mrs. Lathrop.

"Yes, I heard him.But I don't put that against Mr. Kettlewell, not a tallI'm sure he made every penny of it honestly, and if he's retired from business now, it don't mean he's quit work.It's no easy job cutting coupons off all the bonds he must have, and collecting rents is a occupation I don't envy nobody.It's the penalty that rich men have to pay for their success.They work hard to get the principal, and then they're made to work twice as hard to get the interest.There's no such thing as rest for the rich any more'n there is for the poor.I used to think before Father died as I'd like to roll in wealth, but it ain't no easy rolling, I can tell you that, Mrs. Lathrop, especially when you've got a tenant like Mrs. Macy, who won't buy so much as a gas-tip or do so much as drive a nail without charging it up to the owner."

Miss Clegg's participation in the Christmas dinner at her neighbors' was twofold.She took part in its preparation as well as in its discussion.It was her soup which began it, it was her "stuffing" which added zest to the roast turkey, it was her cranberry sauce which sweetened contrastingly the high seasoning, and it was her mince pie which brought the repast to a fitting and enjoyable close. Seated opposite to Mr. Kettlewell, where she could revel in a full view of his shining pate and his warmly comforting whiskers, her enjoyment was ocular as well as gustatory; and under the caressing sweetness of his voice it was likewise auricular. For the occasion Jathrop had provided a fine vintage champagne, and though Miss Clegg, whose total-abstinence principles forbade her to even taste, refrained from so much as touching her lips to the edge of her glass, she unquestionably warmed in the stimulating atmosphere of the sparkling, bubbling, golden juice of the grape. To her it was indeed the red-letter Christmas of her life, and every incident, of the dinner especially, was a matter for reflection and rumination in the succeeding hours.

In this vale of tears, however, there is apparently no great joy without its compensating sorrow; and in Susan Clegg's case the one followed swiftly on the heels of the other. In the pale gray of the dawn of the following day, Susan Clegg dashed wildly out of her kitchen door and flitted with lifted skirts across the brief intervening space that led to Mrs. Lathrop's back door. As pallid as the morning itself, her scant hair streaming, her eyes wide with mixed terror and indignation, she burst into her neighbor's kitchen, where to her great relief she found her old friend already up and occupied.

One glimpse of Susan was enough for Mrs. Lathrop.Up went her hands and down went she on to the nearest chair with an inarticulate gasp of horrified yet questioning astonishment, while Miss Clegg flopped limply into another at the end of the kitchen table.

There she must have sat for a full minute before she could get breath to utter a word, which, being contrary to all her habits, was in itself terrifying to her friend.Eventually, however, she forced herself to assume an upright position and simultaneously attained a somewhat feeble attempt at speech.

"Well, of all things in this world to happen to me!"Then she paused for a fresh breath, which being utterly without precedent, added mightily to Mrs. Lathrop's alarm."And even now at this minute I don't really know whether I'm more dead than alive, or more alive than dead."

Mrs. Lathrop, believing that the situation being extraordinary, some extraordinary effort on her part was demanded, stirred herself to a prolonged speech.

"Don't tell me I'm looking—"

"No, I'm not a ghost, if that's what you mean.You are looking at Susan Clegg in the flesh—all the flesh that ain't been scared clean off her.But it's the greatest miracle as ever happened in this community that it's my body and not my spirit as is here to tell the tale.My house was broken into by a burglar, Mrs. Lathrop, and I was tied up and gagged in one of my own chairs."

Mrs. Lathrop just gasped.Susan drew herself up a little straighter, gaining courage from the sound of her own voice, and striking something like her old oral gait.

"I was gagged for five hours, Mrs. Lathrop, and knowing me as you do for all these years and years, maybe you can feel what being gagged for five hours and not able to say even 'boo' meant to a active person like me.Every one of those hours was like a eternity in a Spanish inferno of torture.And everything I possess in this world, from my bonnet and striped silk dress to Father's deeds at the mercy of that gagger.And all I've got to say is this: If I hadn't of been built over, it never in the wide creation would have happened.And if your son Jathrop thinks he can ever make up to me for being gagged by inviting me to a Christmas dinner, most of which I cooked with my own hands, and offering to give me strange pieces of furniture to take the place of pieces as is old friends and dearer than the apples of my two eyes, he'd better do some more thinking. There never was nothing about the house I was born in and my mother and father died in to make a burglar look at it twice. No burglar as had any respect for himself or his calling, Mrs. Lathrop, would have looked at it once or knowed as it was there. But built over it's as different as diamon's is from pebbles. It looks money from the tips of its lightning rods to its cellar windows and is as inviting to robbers as if it had a sign on the gatepost, reading: 'Walk in!' So, however you look at it, there's nobody responsible for my gagging and for whatever is missing but one man, and that man is Jathrop Lathrop. It's easy to be seen as he's no more fit to have money than a crow as steals gold trinkets that cost fortunes and goes and hides 'em in hollow trees. He was born poor, and the Lord meant him to stay poor, no matter what Mrs. Allen and her Persian religion has to say about things as happens being meant to happen. The Lord hadn't nothing to do with Jathrop going to the Klondike and getting rich, you can be certain about that. If he hadn't been fool enough to take a kicking cow for a perfectly good debt and then let it loose to ride over a peaceful and long-suffering community, he'd 'a' lived and died a pauper in this here very town. So's far as I can see it was the devil and not the Lord as guided Jathrop from the first, and everything as has happened since shows the devil is still guiding him. Everything he turns his mind to goes by contraries. I'm not saying anything against the goodness of Jathrop's intentions, mind you, Mrs. Lathrop, but no matter how good they are, evil and misery certainly seems sure to follow."

The tirade stirred Mrs. Lathrop to her feet, but she was not resentful.She knew that Susan Clegg's bitterness was confined to her tongue, and that even with that she could salve as well as sting.

"Can't I—?"she suggested.

"Indeed you can," answered Miss Clegg."I never felt as I needed a cup of tea more, and if the doughnuts I brought you ain't all eat up, I'd relish four or five of 'em right now."

"You haven't—" began Mrs. Lathrop, taking down the teapot.

"No; but I'm coming to it.I begun with the cause, and the effect'll come trailing after like the tails of Mary's little lambs.Only the tails in this case was bigger than the sheep.It may have been hearing the noise Jathrop makes when he eats, or it may have been your turkey gravy or your biscuits, Mrs. Lathrop, or all of 'em put together.Not knowing which, I'm not foolish enough to blame one more'n the other.But it's a fact as is undeniable that I never slept poorer than last night.I was in bed by nine, but I never closed my eyes till eleven, and I certainly heard the clock strike midnight.I counted goats jumping over a stile, and I counted 'em backward as well as forward, but I heard one struck, and I heard two.And then I heard something as set my hair up on end and the gooseflesh sprouting all over me.It sounded like footsteps in the 'But. Pan. ,' and they was too heavy for the cat's, I could tell that at once, though at two in the morning it's surprising how loud a cat's footsteps can sound, especially when it's reached the pouncing stage, and the rat ain't got no hole to run to. I'd forgot to put the turkey leg in the ice-box as I'd carried home with me, and all I could think of was that if it was the cat, there'd be nothing left on that bone by morning, unless I stopped things right then and immediately. You'd never believe how cold a house can be at two o'clock in the morning of the day after Christmas unless you'd got up in it as I did; and now to look back at it, I see how lucky it was as it was as cold as it was, for if it hadn't of been, I'd a gone down just as I was, and I was in no trim to meet a man burglar, I can tell you thatSo I just slipped into this flannel wrapper and a old pair of slippers, which I've got on now under these arctics, and I picked up the candle as I'd lit, and down-stairs I went.Well, Mrs. Lathrop, I hope you may never in your born days in this world or the other have such a shock as met me there face to face in my own new, built-over kitchen. If there wasn't the biggest giant of a man I ever see coming out of the shadows between the cookstove and the cellar door. And he with his head all wrapped around in one of my best plaid roller towels, so that nothing of him was to be seen but two fierce, staring, bloodshot eyes as gleamed like a wild beast's. Oh, my soul and body, Mrs. Lathrop, that minute! How I ever kept my senses I don't pretend to say, more especially as he was on me with one jump. There was no such thing as holding on to the candle, you can see that. It dropped, and I never knew I dropped it. For, of course, I shut my eyes, and when your eyes is shut, there's no knowing whether there's a lighted candle about or whether there isn't."

In her agitation over the recital, Mrs. Lathrop, who was placing cups and saucers on the table, let one of the cups slide crashing to the floor."Oh, Su—!"she exclaimed.

"You may well say: 'Oh, Susan!'" Miss Clegg continued."There is times when 'Oh, Susan' don't half express the state of affairs, and this was one of 'em, Mrs. Lathrop.It wasn't in nature for me not to scream, so I screamed, and it was that scream that did the business.It showed the burglar I wasn't deaf and dumb, and people as isn't deaf and dumb is looked on by burglars as their natural enemies.Maybe some people can scream without opening their mouths, but I never was one of that kind, and the kind as open their mouths when they scream is the kind that all burglars prefer.It saves 'em the trouble of forcing apart their jaws.I never shut my mouth after opening it; for the burglar just shoved something in it as quick as scat, and then he tied a bandage around back of my head so I couldn't spit it out.Then he picked me up and plumped me down hard in a chair and tied me fast to it with my own clothesline.And all the time he never no more opened his lips to speak than if he couldn't.It's my opinion he must have had a cold and lost his voice. Either that, or his voice was such a unpleasant voice he was ashamed to let anybody hear it. For it ain't in common sense as a man, even if he is a burglar, could keep as still as he did, if he had a speaking voice that's in any way fit for use. I know in the time he took there was a lot of things I felt to say to him, and would if I could, and common sense'll tell you, Mrs. Lathrop, that he must have felt to say a lot of things to me. But he didn't make so much as a peep behind his roller towel."

"Did—?"asked Mrs. Lathrop, pouring the tea.

"I can't say as he did or he didn't.I haven't missed nothing yet, but then I haven't looked.Still, if he didn't I can't say as I'd have much respect for him.What sort of a burglar would a burglar be to take all that trouble of breaking in, binding and gagging, and then go away without helping himself to something for his trouble.I ain't got no love for burglars in general or in particular. But any burglar as 'ld do a fool trick like that I ain't got no respect for neither."

"How—?"queried her neighbor as she passed Susan her cup.

"It was something of a job I can tell you, but when I sets my mind to a thing I sets my mind to it, and ropes and a kitchen chair ain't got the power to stop me.I begun wriggling as soon as I heard the burglar shut the door behind him, and I kept on wriggling for every minute of the five hours.A tramped-on worm never did more turning and wriggling than I did between two and seven this morning, and at last wriggling being its own reward, I wriggled free, first with my hands and then with my feet.But before I got my feet free, I undid the band and ungagged myself and said just a few of the things that was bottled up all that time.The Bible says there's a time to talk and a time to be still, but there's such a thing as overdoing the still time, I think, and when you're gagged by a burglar is one of 'em."

Susan sipped her tea for a moment in silence.

"Where's Jathrop and Mr. Kettlewell?"she asked at length."Ain't they up yet?"

Mrs. Lathrop nodded."They start—" she began.

"You don't mean they've both lit out already?"asked Susan in surprise.Then: "I was hoping to see Mr. Kettlewell again.But it's a long journey back to New York, so I suppose they set off before light."

Mrs. Lathrop nodded once more.

"Aren't—?"she questioned.

"I certainly am.I'm going to report the burglary at once.I've got a clue, and it ought to be easy enough to run down that burglar."She drew from her bosom a rather damp handkerchief."That's what he left me to chew on for five hours," she said, as she spread it out."And there's the clue right there in the corner."

Mrs. Lathrop took it to the window and inspected it through her glasses.The handkerchief was initialed with a "K."

The New Year came and January was passing and, so far as Susan Clegg cared to divulge at least, there was no news of her burglar.It was noted, however, not only by Mrs. Lathrop, but by Mrs. Macy and Gran'ma Mullins, and indeed by all the ladies of the Sewing Society, that Miss Clegg had adopted an air of secretiveness concerning the matter that was quite foreign to her usual frank, unreserved communicativeness.But the curiosity provoked by this strangely unfamiliar attitude was swallowed up in the sensational tidings which spread throughout the community shortly after.Without so much as a hint of warning, Susan Clegg had vanished between dark and dawn, leaving her house locked, bolted, and barred, the blinds drawn, and the shutters fast closed.

For once Mrs. Lathrop, thus deprived of her prop and her stay, evinced sufficient initiative to have the cellar door forced and a search of the premises made; a rumor having got abroad that the burglar had returned, this time more murderously inclined, and that Miss Clegg's mangled corpse would be found stiff and stark within her own darkened domicile. To every one's infinite relief the search proved the rumor utterly unfounded; and it proved something more, as well. It proved that Susan's departure was plainly premeditated—"with malice prepense," to quote Judge Fitch—since all her best clothes had gone with her. Whereupon sentiment switched to the opposite pole, and it was openly declared that Miss Clegg had gone after the burglar.

The wonder was of a magnitude calculated to extend far beyond the proverbial nine days, and it probably would have greatly exceeded that limit, had not the heroine of the affair chosen to cut it short of her own volition by reappearing quite as suddenly as she had vanished, at the end of a single week.

Mrs. Lathrop, looking across from her bedroom window as she arose from her night's sleep on the morning of the eighth day, was joyously startled to see the Clegg windows unshaded, and the house otherwise displaying signs of rehabitation. Nor did she have long to wait for the explanation of the mystery, which to the exclusion of everything else had filled her mind ever since her friend's going. With a shawl over her head and shoulders, she hastened through the pergola, and the next moment was facing her neighbor with glad eyes across four yards of kitchen floor space.

"Oh, Susan!Such a fri—" These were her four and a half words of greeting.

"I knew it would," Miss Clegg caught her up, beaming as Mrs. Lathrop couldn't remember ever to have seen her beam before."I knew it would frighten you all half to death, but when a thing's to be done, it's to be done, and there ain't no use shirking.I had to go, and I had to go quick, and I was never so glad of anything in my life, past or present, as that I went.Of course, it was all along of that burglary, as any fool might have guessed if they took the trouble.In the first place, I don't mind telling you now, I went straight to Mr. Weskin the morning after it happened, and I took him the clue and showed it to him. The way he spun around in his spinning chair was fit to make even a level-headed person like me dizzy. He examined the linen, and he examined the way the K was worked, and then he says, no it couldn't possibly be Mr. Kimball's. Now, what do you think of that? Just as if I ever suspected it was. I guess I know Mr. Kimball well enough to know him, even if he has got his head wrapped up in one of my new roller towels, and I told Lawyer Weskin so. Mr. Kimball, indeed! But Lawyer Weskin said as he didn't never hear of a burglar whose name commenced with K, and he didn't know a soul in these parts either, burglar or no burglar, whose name did, except Mr. Kimball. There's only one way to ferret out the perpetrator of a crime, he says, and that's by deduction, and the first rule of deduction is to guess what the K stands for. I never thought much of Lawyer Weskin, I'm free to admit that, but if he don't know nothing else, it's as clear as shooting that he does know about education. For in the end it worked out just as he said, and the Lord be praised for it."

"You don't—" began Mrs. Lathrop in astonishment.

"I don't say as Mr. Kimball had a thing to do with it.I certainly don't.In the first place, Mr. Kimball would never dare to come to my house at such a hour of the morning, and in the second place Mr. Kimball never carried as fine a handkerchief as the one I chewed on.So that put it past Mr. Kimball.And the only other K I could possibly think of was old Mrs. Kitts over to Meadville, who could no more of got over here than could the king of the Sandwich Islands, whose name begins with K, too.There was the Kellys, of course, but the Kellys couldn't qualify neither, for they're too rich to need to do any burglarizing.Well, I can tell you, I soon come to a point where I didn't know where to turn, and I never would of turned neither, if it hadn't of been for a letter I got the day of the night I went away.You'd never guess in the world, Mrs. Lathrop, who that letter was from so I may as well tell you first as last. It was from Mr. Kettlewell."

Mrs. Lathrop opened her mouth in astonishment, but no sound came forth.

"I knew it'ld surprise you, but it's as true as we're both standing in this kitchen at this minute.It was a very nice letter, and it said as how he had admired me from the first minute he saw me, but more particularly after he'd sat opposite to me at the table and eat my cranberry sauce.He said he'd always loved cranberry sauce, but as he felt he'd never tasted none until he tasted mine.I certainly never see a more complimentary letter than that letter of Mr. Kettlewell's.But it was the end of the letter where he signed his name that lit me up with the clear light of revelation.Until I see his name spelled out there in black and white, I never once believed it begun with a K.I'd thought all along as his name was Cattlewell, with a C.Far be it from me, Mrs. Lathrop, to ever have suspected as Jathrop's friend would stoop to housebreaking and to binding and gagging a lone woman, but there's other ways as his handkerchief might have got to my mouth, and I felt to know the truth. His address was on the letter, and there was nothing as could have stayed me from getting to that address as fast as steam and steel could carry me. I left in the middle of the night, and I got to New York in the morning, and I didn't have that feeling for nothing. Mr. Kettlewell was at his hotel, and in all my born days I never see a person gladder to see anybody than Mr. Kettlewell was to see me. It's marvelous what a impression a little good cooking will make on a man, even if it's only in cranberry sauce. His mouth actually hadn't stopped watering yet. Leastwise he said it hadn't, and I'd be a fool not to believe him. He begun talking about it right away, and I let him talk, just so's I could look at his shiny bald head and his red whiskers without having to think of anything else except the sound of his milk-and-honey voice. Finally he said he supposed I'd come to the city to select Jathrop's Christmas present of furnishings, and if I'd like him to help me select 'em, he'd be glad enough to go along and lend a hand. Well, nothing could of been nicer than that, now, could it? But I told him I wasn't one as traveled all the way to New York under false pretences, and that if he must have the truth, I'd never give one thought to Jathrop's present since he mentioned it. All my thought, I said, had been give to finding a handkerchief with a K onto it, which I'd washed and ironed with my own hands and brought to him, believing I must of picked it up at the Christmas dinner by mistake, and not wanting him to feel the need of it any longer. And you can believe me or not, Mrs. Lathrop, just as you feel about it, if he didn't right then and there on seeing that clue, confess that it did belong to him, and that he couldn't for the life of him remember where he'd left it."

Mrs. Lathrop, who had been standing all the while, dropped into a chair at this point in dumb stupefaction. But Susan, who had been caught with a bowl of batter in one hand and a spoon in the other, paused only to do a little more stirring.

"Yes, sir," she went on, still apparently as pleased as punch."The clue belonged to Mr. Kettlewell and no one else, which led me to suspect right away that the burglar must have robbed your house first.I knowed very well that I never carried that clue home myself, though I'd said I might, just for the sake of drawing Mr. Kettlewell on.And so how could it have got into my mouth unless the burglar got it from Mr. Kettlewell himself?But there is stranger things in this world than you and me ever dreamed of, Mrs. Lathrop, and that was one of 'em.Mr. Kettlewell is a very frank and open gentleman, and seeing how disturbed I was over something, though I'd never so much as breathed burglar or burglary, he made another confession.And when it comes to dreaming, there is very few people, he said, as has the power to dream the way he does. He don't just lie still in bed and picture things out in his sleep, but he gets up and does the things he's dreaming about. He ain't got no limitations in it, either. Sleepwalkers is more or less common. But sleepwalkers just walk, and that ends 'em. Mr. Kettlewell says he very seldom walks. He usually drives a automobile when he's dreaming, just as he does when he's wide awake. Sometimes he comes to while he's driving, and he's found himself often as much as a couple a hundred miles from home, and without a cent in his clothes, the clothes usually being just pajamas with nothing but a handkerchief in the pocket. Now, if you had any imagination a tall, Mrs. Lathrop, you'd see what I'm coming to, but as you haven't you don't, I can tell by the way you look.So you'll get the full benefit of the surprise when I say that on Christmas night Mr. Kettlewell distinctly remembers he dreamed of committing a burglary.He says it wasn't my mince pie as did it, because he's often eaten mince pie before and never dreamed nothing worse than going to the electric chair; and it wasn't my stuffing neither, for turkey stuffing when it's indigestible always makes him dream he's a monkey climbing trees. He says once he woke up sudden and fell and broke his arm, but that that was a long while ago. Now he's had more experience, he never wakes up till he's safe back in bed again. And he says doughnuts causes his dreams to run back to when he was a boy, and one time he come to, after a after-dinner nap, when he had doughnuts for dessert, playing marbles in the back alley with a lot of street urchins. I can tell you, Mrs. Lathrop, he was most interesting. He's got all his dreams sort of classified in that way, and can almost tell to a dot what he'll dream about according to what he eats. And he says soggy biscuits always makes him dream he's robbing a house or killing somebody. It was mighty lucky for me, as you can see for yourself, that this time he only dreamed of binding and gagging. If he'd dreamed of murder, I'd not be here now to tell the tale. And it's clean to be seen that your biscuits would of been an accessory before the fact."

"Then he—"

"Yes, it was him as done it, and without no moral blame attaching to him a tallIf he'd killed me, the law couldn't of touched him either, for the law takes no account of what a person does while they're asleep.But as you made the biscuits in your full senses and with your eyes wide open, you'd of been the only one to blame."

Mrs. Lathrop groaned."You know, Sus—" she protested.

"Of course if I was alive, I'd never hold it against you, because I know very well you can't make biscuits no better, and ain't never had sense enough to learn.But if I was murdered, my ghost couldn't testify, and I don't see as how you could be saved from the law taking its course."

At this juncture there was a sound overhead, and both ladies started, Mrs. Lathrop in surprise and her friend in sudden realization of neglected duties.

"What is—?"inquired Mrs. Lathrop.

"It's him," answered Susan."Mr. Kettlewell.And the coffee's boiled now till it's bitter, and there ain't a single cake on the griddle."She was turning back to the stove as Mrs. Lathrop's exclamation caught her and switched her around.

"Why, Susan Clegg!"

"Don't Susan Clegg me, Mrs. Lathrop," she commanded."There ain't no Susan Clegg any more.When Susan Clegg disappeared a week ago last night, she disappeared for good, never to return.And if you suspect anything else, it's best I should introduce myself here and now,—Susan Kettlewell, from this time forth, if you please."

Mrs. Lathrop sprang up and dropped back again.

"You don't—"

"I do.I do mean to say I'm married at last.We was wedded with a ring in New York last Wednesday, and it's my husband's footsteps you hear up there in the new bathroom."

She dropped three spreading spoonfuls of batter on the greased griddle and gave Mrs. Lathrop a full minute to absorb the announcement.Then, as she drew the coffee pot to one side, she continued:

"And it was purely a love match, make no mistake about that.He's got money enough to buy and sell Jathrop, but he's as simple-minded and simple-tasted as a babe in arms. And there's nothing I can think of that he's not ready and willing to give me.Besides, he's frank and open about everything.He says his teeth is false, and he has a bullet in his right leg, got one time when he dreamed somebody was shooting him; but that otherwise he's as perfect as a man of his age can be.He says he'll buy a wig if I want him to, and that if I don't like the color of his whiskers, he'll have 'em dyed whatever color I'd like best, and the wig'l be made to match.But I wouldn't have him changed the least mite. And if there's one thing in the world I'm thankful for it is that I got him and not Jathrop. And I'm not thinking from the financial standpoint, neither."

THE END

---

Distinctive Fiction by Anne Warner

The reading world owes Anne Warner a vote of thanks for her contributions to the best of American humor.—New York Times.

Anne Warner has taken her place as one of the drollest of American humorists.—Century Magazine.

The Gay and Festive Claverhouse

A story of the desperate attempt of a supposedly dying man to lose the love of a girl.

Sunshine Jane

The joyful story of a Sunshine Nurse whose mission was not to care for sick bodies but to heal sick souls.

When Woman Proposes.

A clever and entertaining story of a woman who fell in love with an army officer.

How Leslie Loved

Not only a buoyant love story but a penetrating satire on modern manners.

Just Between Themselves

A vivacious satire on married life which is full of mirth of the quieter, chuckling variety.

The Taming of Amorette

A clever comedy telling how a man cured his attractive wife of flirting.

Susan Clegg, Her Friend, and Her Neighbors

A study of life which is most delectable for its simplicity and for the quaint character creation.

Susan Clegg and a Man in the House

The remarkable happenings at the Clegg homestead after the boarder came.

The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary.

The pranks of a scapegrace nephew who was showing his old aunt a "good time."

In a Mysterious Way

Compounded of amusing studies of human nature in a rural community.

A Woman's Will

Describes the wooing of a young American widow on the continent by a musical genius.

Little, Brown & Co. , Publishers, Boston