Susan Clegg and Mrs. Macy walked down to Mrs. Lathrop's gate, and out of her gate and to Miss Clegg's gate; the whole in a silence deadly and impressive. Mrs. Macy paused there.
"I don't believe I'll come in," she said doubtfully.
"I don't blame you," said Susan, "I wouldn't if it was me. Jathrop's boy, indeed! What kind of a man is it as'll have a Chinese family and go forcing them onto the true and long-tried friends of his one and only mother!"
"I can't see why he didn't leave the boy in the Klondike," said Mrs. Macy slowly and reflectively. "I thought men always left their Chinese families just where theyfound 'em. It's strange Jathrop brought him home with him."
"You see now what my dream meant," said Susan darkly, "a cat, indeed. It's small wonder I knew the cat was Jathrop Lathrop. Of all the mean, sly, creeping creatures that ever come up against the back of your legs sudden a cat is the worst. A snake is open and aboveboard beside a cat. You can see a snake. You don't see 'em often around here, thank heaven."
"Well, we haven't seen Jathrop often around here for a long time," said Mrs. Macy, whose mind was as given to easy logical deduction as many of her mental caliber, "and we do see a lot of cats—you know that, Susan."
"'How's Susan Clegg?'" quoted Susan in a tone of reflective wrath. "I don't know whether you know it or not, Mrs. Macy, but Jathrop asked after me in his letter to his mother, and him with a Chinese wife. 'How's Susan Clegg?' What did he write that for if he was married, I'd like to know."
"Maybe he wanted to know how you were," suggested Mrs. Macy.
The look she received in recognition of this offered explanation led to her immediately proposing to go on home. "You've got the Chinaman to look after, anyhow," she added.
"You'd better come in while I go up and look at him again," said Susan shortly. "It's a very strange sensation to be alone in your house with what you fully and freely take to your dead father's bed and board, supposing it's a wife, and then find out as it's her son instead. Come on in."
Mrs. Macy was easily persuaded, and they thereupon went up the walk. "I guess I'll go see if he's still asleep," Susan said when they reached the piazza, and Mrs. Macy forthwith sat down to await what might come of it.
Susan was absent but a few minutes; she returned with a fresh layer of disapproval upon her face.
"Is he still sleeping?" Mrs. Macy asked.
"Yes, he's still sleeping," Miss Cleggreplied, jerking a chair forward for herself. "You'd know he was Jathrop Lathrop's child just by the way he sleeps. You remember what a one Jathrop always was for sleeping. I don't know as I remember Jathrop's ever being awake till he was fairly grown. Whatever you set him at always just made him more sleepy. You know yourself, Mrs. Macy, as he wouldn't be no grasshopper with Mrs. Lathrop for his mother, but a cocoon is a comet beside what Jathrop Lathrop always was. I don't know whether he's rich or not, but I do know that heathen Chinee is his son, and I know it just by the way he sleeps."
"And so Jathrop's rich," said Mrs. Macy, rocking agreeably to and fro, and evidently striving toward more pleasant conversation.
"Yes," said Susan darkly, "rich and with a Chinese wife somewhere. Just as often as I think of Jathrop Lathrop writing, 'How's Susan Clegg,' with a Chinese wife I feel more and more tempered, and I can't conceal my feelings. I never was one toconceal anything; if I had a Chinese wife the whole world might know it."
Just here Gran'ma Mullins hove in sight, coming slowly and laboriously up the street.
"Why, there's Gran'ma Mullins!" Mrs. Macy exclaimed. "She's surely coming to see you, too."
Both ladies remained silent, watching the progress of Gran'ma Mullins.
Gran'ma Mullins arrived a good deal out of breath. Susan brought a chair out of the house for her.
"I come to—tell you," panted the new visitor as soon as she had attained unto the chair, "that Jathrop's—things is—coming."
"What things?" asked Susan.
"They all come on—the ten o'clock—from the junction; Hiram is helping unload."
"What's he brought?" Susan asked.
"Well, he's brought an automobile," said Gran'ma Mullins, "and a lot of other trunks and boxes."
"An automobile!" exclaimed Mrs. Macy, "well, heisrich then!"
"I wouldn't be too sure of that," said Susan, "some very poor folks is riding that way nowadays."
"And he brought three trunks and seventeen big wooden boxes," continued Gran'ma Mullins, "big boxes."
"Three trunks and sev-en-teen—Three trunks and sev-en—" Susan's voice faded into nothingness.
"Goodness knows what's in them," said Gran'ma Mullins. "Hiram was getting so hot unloading that I wanted him to stop and let me fan him, but he wouldn't hear to it. Hiram's so brave. If he said he'd unload something, he'd unload it if he dropped dead under it and was smashed to nothing."
There was a pause of unlimited bewilderment while Mrs. Macy and Susan raised Jathrop upon the pedestal erected by his three trunks, seventeen boxes and the automobile.
"And to think of his having a Chinese wife," Susan exclaimed, the keen edge ofsorrow cutting crossways through all her words.
It was just here that Mrs. Lupey now appeared, approaching at a good pace. Mrs. Lupey was a large, imposing woman and wore a silk dolman with fringe. It was immediately necessary for the party to adjourn to the sitting-room, as the piazza was strictly limited.
It was Mrs. Lupey who without loss of time did away with the Lathrop parentage of the young Chinese.
"Why, he's his servant, of course," she said in a lofty scorn. "I'm surprised you didn't know that by his age."
"I did think of his age," Susan said, "but I read once in some paper as the women in China get married when they're four years old, so you'd never be able to tell nothing by the age of no one there. Well, well, and so she isn't his wife, nor yet his son. Well, I'm glad—for Mrs. Lathrop's sake."
"But if Jathrop's really got a automobile and seventeen trunks, hemustbe awfulrich," said Mrs. Macy. "It'll be a great thing for this town if Jathrop's rich. He'd ought to be very grateful to the place where his happy childhood memories run around barefoot."
"Oh, he'll remember," said Gran'ma Mullins, "it's easy to remember when you've got the money to do it. But I hope to heaven he won't set Hiram off on that track again. Hiram does so want to go away and make a fortune; I'm worried for fear he will all the time. And Lucy wants him to, too. I can't understand a woman as wants a fortune worse than she wants Hiram. Lucy doesn't seem to want Hiram 'round at all any more. If he's asleep, she starts right in making the bed the same as if he wasn't in it, and if she's sewing, he don't dare go within the length of her thread.
"Life has come to a pretty pass when a wife'll run a needle into a husband just for the simple pleasure of feeling him go away when she sticks him." Gran'ma Mullins sighed.
"I wonder what they're doing now!" Mrs. Macy said.
All four turned at this and looked toward the Lathrop house together. It was quiet as usual.
"I d'n know as it changes my opinion of Jathrop much, that being his servant," said Miss Clegg suddenly. "It's kind of different, his handing his wife or his son over to me; but his heathen Chinee servant! I don't know as I'm very pleased."
"Pleased!" said Mrs. Lupey. "Why, in San Francisco they make 'em live underground like rats."
"Maybe that was why you dreamed he was a cat, Susan?" suggested Mrs. Macy, whose brain seemed to grasp at the subject under consideration with special illumination.
Susan rose. "I think you'd better go," she said abruptly, "I've got to get dinner. My mind's in no state to deal with all these sides of Jathrop and his Chinaman just now."
What the day brought up the street and in and around Mrs. Lathrop's house would take too long to catalogue. Suffice it to say that poor Mrs. Lathrop, who had been for long years the veriest zero in the life of the community, became suddenly its center and apex.
When Jathrop went to New York at the end of the week, he left his mother not only sitting, but rocking in the lap of luxury, with her head leaning back against more luxury and her feet braced firmly on yet more luxury. Even her friend over the way was rendered utterly content.
And the pleasantest part of it all was the way that it affected Susan Clegg. As Susan sat by Mrs. Lathrop and turned upon her that tender gaze which one old friend may turn on another old friend when the latter's son has suddenly bloomed forth golden, her full heart found utterance thus:
"Well, Mrs. Lathrop—well, Mrs. Lathrop, I guess no one will ever doubt anything again. Talk about dreams,now! Idreamed Jathrop was a cat, and the reason was that it's a well-known fact that catsalwayscome back. Why, Mrs. Macy told me once how she chloroformed a cat, and put it in a flour sack with a stone, and put the sack in a hogshead of water, and put the cover on the hogshead, and put a stone—another stone—on that, and went to church to hear the minister preach on 'Do unto others as you do unto others,' and when she came back, the cat was asleep on top of the hogshead, and Mrs. Macy got the worst shock she ever got. So you can easy see why I dreamed Jathrop was a cat; and hedidcome back.
"I declare that'll always be the pleasantest recollection of my life, how I met him at the station and how we came chatting up the street together. How he has improved, Mrs. Lathrop—not but what he was always handsome! There was always something noble about Jathrop. Gran'ma Mullins said yesterday as he made her think of a man she saw in a play once as stood on his crossedlegs in front of a fire and smoked. So careless.
"And then his bringing Mrs. Macy that polar-bear skin! Mrs. Macy says if there was one spot in the whole wide world where she never expected to set foot it was on top of a polar bear, and now she can stand on her head on one if the fancy takes her. I saw the minister when I was down in the square to-night, and he told me not to speak of it, but he thought a service of prayer for any stocks and mines as Jathrop has would be the only fitting form of gratitude which a reverent and affectionate congregation might offer to the great and glorious generosity of him who is going to give us a steeple after all these years of finishing flat at the top. Mr. Kimball came out to tell me to ask you if you'd like some one to come regularly for your order, and he says he'll keep caviare from now on, just on the chance of Jathrop's being here to eat it; he says why he didn't keep it before was he thought it was a kind of chamois skin.
"It's beautiful to see the faces down-town, Mrs. Lathrop; you never saw nothing like it. Everybody's just so happy. Hiram is grinning from ear to ear over being took to the Klondike, and everybody is swore to not let Gran'ma Mullins know he's going. He's going to climb out of the window at night and get away that way, and Gran'ma Mullins won't mind what she feels when he really does come back a millionaire, too. She'll be just like you, Mrs. Lathrop; no one minds anything once it's over. Little misunderstandings are easy forgot.
"And to think there's been a blue automobile puffing at these very kitchen steps! To think you and me was over to Meadville and back between dinner and supper one day! I guess Mrs. Lupey never got such a start. She'd been all the morning getting home on the train and was only just putting her bonnet away in its box when we rolled up. I never enjoyed nothing like that roll up in all my life! I never see automobiles from the automobile's side before, but nowI can. When a automobile goes over a duck it makes all the difference in the world whether it's your automobile or your duck.
"And then Jathrop's generosity! Not but what he was always generous. Deacon White says he will say that for Jathrop, he was always generous. And look what he brought home. Every child in town is just about out of their senses. Felicia Hemans is crazy about the earrings, and 'Liza Em'ly won't never take off the bracelet. Mr. Shores can't keep the tears back when he looks at his watch charm. I think it was so kind of Jathrop. But Jathrop was always kind; you know yourself that a kinder creature never lived than Jathrop. I always said that for him.
"And then his having a new fence built around the cemetery. It was thoughtful, and Judge Fitch says nobody can't say more. But Judge Fitch says Jathrop was always thoughtful; he says he's been interested in him always just for that very reason.Judge Fitch says Jathrop's nature was always that deep kind that's easy overlooked. He says he'll have to confess to his shame that some of the time he overlooked him himself. He says it's very difficult to understand a deep nature, because if a deep nature don't make money, there's hardly any way of ever knowing that it really was deep; people just think you're a fool then—like we always thought Jathrop was. You know, nobody ever thought he ever could amount to nothing. You know that yourself, Mrs. Lathrop. But making money lets you see just what a person's got in 'em and see it plain.
"I'm sure for all I've loved Jathrop as if he was going to be my own, for years and years and years, still I never credited him with being the man he is. I supposed he was a tramp somewhere—yes, I really did, Mrs. Lathrop, you may believe me or not, but that's just what I thought when I thought anything at all about him—which wasn't often.
"Everybody in the whole place is busy remembering pleasant things about him now. The minister's wife remembers his coming to a Christmas tree once a long time ago when they both was little; she says she hasn't thought of it in thirty years, but she remembers it as plain as day now,—he had on a coat and a little tie.
"And Gran'ma Mullins says she never will forget the day before he was born, for she went to town and dropped her little bead bag, and you know how much she thinks of her little bead bag now when the beads is all worn off, so you can think what store she set by it when the beads were still on, and so she was all back and forth along the road hunting for it the whole blessed afternoon, and when she found it and went home, shewastired, and she slept late next morning because her husband was out very late the night before, and when he slept late she always slept late, 'cause she said sleeping late was almost the only treat he ever give her, and, anyhow, when they did wake up andget up and get out, there was Jathrop, and she says she shall never forget her joy over having found the bead bag again.
"Mrs. Macy says she remembers the day he hid, and you thought he was in the cistern, and you was kneeling down looking in when he jumped out from behind the stove and give you such a start you went in head first.
"I remember that day myself, too—father was insisting he was paralyzed then, and mother and me wouldn't take his word for it, and we fully expected he'd race over and help haul you out, but all he said was, 'She'll have to manage the best she can—I'm paralyzed,' and we really began to believe him from then on.
"The minister says he shall always remember how well he looked when he put on long trousers; the minister's preparing a little paper on Jathrop to read at the Sunday-school annual, and he says he shall begin with the day he put on long trousers and then mark his rise step by step. Theminister's so pleased over Jathrop's patting Brunhilde Susan on the head; he says there are pats and pats, but that pat that Jathrop give Brunhilde Susan was what he calls, in pure and Biblical simplicity,apat."
Susan paused. Mrs. Lathrop just felt her diamond solitaires, glanced at the new kitchen range, and was silent.
"And then, Mrs. Lathrop, that dear blessed little Chinese angel—I tell you I shall never forget that boy. I liked his face when I first laid eyes on him, and when I thought he was Jathrop's lawful wife, I loved him as I'd loved even a Chinaman if he was your daughter; but when I saw him cleaning up my sink, polishing my pans, washing out my cupboards and all that, just the same as yours,thenwas when I see that a heathen Chinee has just the same right to go to heaven that anybody else has, and from then on I just trusted him completely and let him do every bit of the work till he left.
"I see now why everybody's so happybeing a missionary if you can just get away and live with the Chinee. I'd have kept that boy if Jathrop hadn't wanted him—I'd have been very glad to; and it's awful to think we're keeping quiet, lovable natures like his from settling here. A girl might do much worse than marry that Chinese—verymuch worse. A very great deal worse. Though I suppose many would hesitate."
Mrs. Lathrop rose, went to the cupboard, took out a bottle of homemade gooseberry wine, poured out a little, and took a sip. She did not offer any to Susan.
"It'll do you good," said Susan encouragingly. "I don't like the taste myself, but it'll do you good. Besides, Mrs. Lathrop, you must begin to get used to it. When you go around with Jathrop in his private car, you'll have to drink wine, and if I was you, I'd stop tying a stocking around your neck nights, for you'll have to wear a very different cut of gowns soon. If Jathrop buys that yacht he's gone to look at, you'll have to wear a sailor blouse."
"Oh," said Mrs. Lathrop faintly, "oh, Susan, I—" Miss Clegg put her hastily back into her chair.
"Never mind if it does make your head go 'round a little, Mrs. Lathrop; you must learn how. It may be hard, but it'll make Jathrop happy, and now he's come back rich, that's what everybody wants to do.
"Mrs. Brown says next time he comes she's going to make him a jet-black pound-cake, and Mrs. Allen says she's going to work him a pincushion. She says it'll be a plain, simple token of affection, but those whom Fortune smiles on soon learn to know the true worth of a simple gift of purest love. She says no one has ever known how she loved Jathrop, 'cause she kept it to herself for fear you'd think she was after him for Polly."
Mrs. Lathrop rocked dreamily.
Susan rose to go.
"Don't—" said Mrs. Lathrop.
"I must," said Susan. "Oh, Mrs. Lathrop, think of his giving me those fifty sharesof stock just on account of my long-suffering friendship for you. I declare he's a great character—that's all I can say.
"I always had a feeling he'd end in some unusual way; when they started to lynch him, I thought that was the way, but now I see that this was the way, and I thank heaven that I wasn't right the other time and am right this time. For human nature is human nature, Mrs. Lathrop, and people are always kinder to a woman whose son comes home from the Klondike a millionaire than they are if they had the bother of lynching him, no matter how much he may have deserved it."
Mrs. Lathrop continued to finger her solitaire earrings in happy silence. Miss Clegg, who never exhibited any tenderness toward anything, went over and arranged the fold-over of her friend's gold-embroidered, silk-quilted kimono.
"I'll be glad when your new hair gets here, Mrs. Lathrop," she said tenderly, "it'll make a different woman of you. It's astonishingwhat a little extra hair can do; I always feel that when I put on my wave.
"You and me will have to be getting used to all kinds of new things now. And that beautiful dream of mine letting us know he was coming. Mrs. Brown says Amelia says the Egyptians worshipped cats and used to pickle them when they died.
"It's astonishing how, if you know enough, you can see how any dream is full of meaning. There's Jathrop so fond of pickles, and you and me worshipping him. And he writing in every letter he has time to get somebody to write for him, 'How's Susan Clegg?'"
Mrs. Lathrop lapsed into beatific slumber. Susan Clegg went quietly home.
It was not in reason to suppose that the return of Jathrop Lathrop should continue to occupy wholly the attention of the community. Each week—even each day—brought its fresh interests. Not the least exciting of the provocative elements was borne back from the metropolis to which 'Liza Em'ly, that hitherto negatively regarded olive branch of the ministerial family, had but recently emigrated. 'Liza Em'ly, it was whispered one day, had written a book.
The Sewing Society, at its next meeting, discussed it, as a matter of course; and Susan Clegg, equally as a matter of course, promptly reported the proceedings to her friend and neighbor, Mrs. Lathrop.
"Well," she began, sitting down with the heavy thump of one who is completely and utterly overcome, "I give up. It's beyond me. I was to the Sewing Society, and it's beyond them all, too. The idea of 'Liza Em'ly's writing a book! No one can see how she ever come to think as she could write a book. No one can see where she got any ideas to put in a book. I don't know what any one thought shewoulddo when she set out for the city to earn her own living, but there wasn't a soul in town as expected her to do it, let alone writing a book, too. I can't see whatever gives any one the idea of earning their living by writing books. Books always seem so sort of unnecessary to me, anyway—I ain't read one myself in years. No one in this community ever does read, and that's what makes everybody so surprised over 'Liza Em'ly, after living among us so long and so steady, starting up all of a sudden and doing anything like this. And what makes it all the more surprising is she neversaid a word about it either—never wrote home to the family or told a living soul. And so you can maybe imagine the shock to the minister when he got word as his own flesh and blood daughter had not only written a book but got it all printed without consulting him. His wife says he was completely done up and could hardly speak for quite a little while, and later when the newspaper clippings begin to come, he had to go to bed and have a salt-water cloth over his eyes. I tell you, Mrs. Lathrop, the minister is a very sensitive nature; it's no light thing to a sensitive nature to get a shock like a daughter's writing a book."
"Is—" asked Mrs. Lathrop.
"Well, I should say that it was," said Miss Clegg. "I should say that it was. And not only is it being advertised, but people are buying it just like mad, the papers say. The minister is still more upset over that; seems the responsibilities of even being connected with books nowadays is no light thing. There was that man as was shot for whathe wrote in a book the other day, you know, and the minister's wife says as the minister is most nervous over what may be in the book; she says he says very few books as everybody is reading ought to be read, and he knows what he's talking about, for he's a great reader himself. Why, his wife says he's got books hid all over the house, and she says—speaking confidentially—as he says most of 'em he's really very sorry he's read—after he's finished 'em. She says—he says he'll know no peace night or day now until he's read 'Liza Em'ly's book. I guess it's no wonder that he's nervous. 'Liza Em'ly's been a handful for years, and since she fell in love with Elijah, there's been just no managing her atall. If Elijah'd loved her, of course it would have been different, but Elijah wasn't a energetic nature, and 'Liza Em'ly was, and when a energetic nature loves a man like Elijah, there's just no knowing where they will end up. I never see why Elijah didn't love 'Liza Em'ly, but her grandmother's nose has always beenagainst her, and he told me himself as it was all he could think of when he sat quietly down to think about her. But all that's neither here nor there, for it's a far cry from a girl's nose to her brains nowadays, thank heavens, and 'Liza Em'ly's got something to balance her now. Polly White has sent for one of the books. She says she'll lend it around, no matter what's in it. Polly says there's one good thing in getting married, and that is it makes you a married woman, and being a married woman lets you read all kinds of books. I guess Polly's been a great reader since she was married. She's meant to get some good out of that situation, and she's done it. The deacon isn't so badly off, either. I wouldn't say that he's glad he's married all the time, but I guess some of the time he don't mind, and it's about all married people ask if only some of the time they can feel to not be sorry. A little let-up is a great relief."
"You—" said Mrs. Lathrop.
"Yes, I know," said Miss Clegg, "but Ipick up a good deal from others, and there's a feeling as married women have when they talk to a woman as they suppose can't possibly know anything just 'cause she never got into any of their troubles, as makes them show forth the truth very plainly. I won't say as married women strike me more and more as fools, for it wouldn't be kindly, but I will say as the way they revel in being married and saying how hard it is, kind of strikes me as amusing.Iwouldn't go into a store and buy a dress and then, when every one knew as I picked it out myself, keep running around telling how it didn't fit and was tearing out in all the seams—but that's about what most of this marriage talk comes to. I do wonder what 'Liza Em'ly has said about marriage inDeacon Tooker Talks. That's a very funny name for a book, I think myself, but that's what she's named it. And as it seems to be about most everything, I suppose it must be about marriage, too. Of course 'Liza Em'ly's so wild to marry Elijah that everybody knows that that was whattook her up to town. She didn't want to earn her living any more than any girl does. Nobody ever really aches to earn their living. But some has to, and some wants to be around with men, and there ain't no better way to be around with men nowadays than to go to work with 'em. You have 'em all day long then, and pretty soon you have 'em all the time. 'Liza Em'ly wants to have Elijah all the time."
"What—" began Mrs. Lathrop.
"Oh, she says she thinks they're so congenial; she told me herself as Elijah 'understood.' It seems to be a great thing to understand nowadays. It's another of those things we used to take for granted but which is now got new and uncommon and most remarkable. She told me when she and Elijah watched the sun setting together, they both understood, and she seemed to feel that that was a safe basis on which to set out for town and start in to earn her own living. The minister didn't want her to go. He was very much against it. It cost such a lot,too. The minister's wife said it would have been ever so much cheaper to fix a girl to get married. You can get married with six pairs of new stockings, the minister's wife says, and it takes a whole dozen with the heels run to earn your living. The minister's wife was very confidential with me about it all, and 'Liza Em'ly confided considerably in me, too. They both knew I'd never tell. Every one always confides in me because they know I never tell. Why, the things folks in this community have told me! Well!—But Inevertell. The real reason I never tell is because they always tell every one themselves before I can get around, but then a confiding nature is always telling its affairs, and so you can't really blame 'em. I never tell my own affairs, because I've learned as affairs is like love letters, and if they're interesting enough, it is very risky. But really, Mrs. Lathrop, I must be going now, and as soon as I get hold of that book, I'll be over with my opinion.Deacon Tooker Talks!My, but that is a funnyname for a book! I can't see myself what kind of a book it can possibly be with that title—but anyway, we shall soon know now."
"Yes, we—" began Mrs. Lathrop.
"Yes, indeed," said Susan, and the seance broke up for that day.
It was resumed the day after, and the day after that, but no further progress having been made in the development of 'Liza Em'ly's affairs, that interesting topic remained in abeyance until after the next meeting of the Sewing Society, when the subject was put forward with emphasis.
"You never hear the beat," said the lady who nearly always went to the Sewing Society to the lady who hadn't been there for years; "this book of 'Liza Em'ly's seems to be something just beyond belief. Polly read it all aloud to us to-day, and I must say it's amostastonishing book. I will tell you in confidence, Mrs. Lathrop, as I ain't surprised that the minister hid his copy and that the newspapers is all printing things about it.Seems it's a man in bed talking to his wife who is asleep most of the time, only he don't pay the slightest attention to her not paying the slightest attention. Polly had the name right, it isDeacon Tooker Talks(which is amostsingular name to my order of thinking). The cover has got a picture of the deacon's head on a pillow talking, and you can think how the minister would feel over his daughter's book's cover having a pillow on it! I walked home with Mrs. Fisher, and she will have it that 'Liza Em'ly's put her father into the book, soul and body. There's a man called Mr. Lexicon as is a lawyer in the book, and Mrs. Fisher says it's the minister. I wouldn't swear as it wasn't the minister myself, but I hate to believe it, for a girl as'll put her father in a book would be equal to most anything, I should suppose. But Mrs. Fisher's sure it's the minister; she says she knew him right off by his ear-muffs. Only 'Liza Em'ly has disguised the ear-muffs by calling them overshoes. Mr. Lexicon has always got on his overshoes. Mrs. Fisherwaited until we got away from all the rest, and then she showed me a review from a New York paper that just took my breath away. It says no such book has appeared before a welcoming public in two hundred and fifty years, and she's going to write the paper and ask what the book two hundred and fifty years ago was about. Mrs. Fisher says she's thinking very seriously of writing a book herself. She says she's always wanted to write a book, and now she thinks she'll go up to town and see 'Liza Em'ly and ask her about their writing a book together. She says she'll furnish all the story, and 'Liza Em'ly can write the book. Then they'll divide the money even. And there'll be money to divide, too, for 'Liza Em'ly's book is surely selling. Mrs. Macy come up after Mrs. Fisher went home, and she had a piece out of another newspaper that Mrs. Lupey sent her, saying the book was in its ninth edition already. She had it with her at the Sewing Society, but she didn't bring it out, out of consideration for the feelings of theminister's wife. Mrs. Macy says she thinks she'll write a book, too. She's got the same idea as Mrs. Fisher about writing it with 'Liza Em'ly, only she says she'll let 'Liza Em'ly use some of her own ideas mixed in with Mrs. Macy's ideas, and she can have two thirds of the money. She says it can't be hard to write a book, or 'Liza Em'ly couldn't never have done it, but she says 'Liza Em'ly has got the Fishers in her book, and she's surprised Mrs. Fisher didn't recognize 'em at the Sewing Society. 'Liza Em'ly calls 'em the Hunters. Fishers, hunters—you see! An' John Bunyan she calls Martin Luther, an' in place of being a genius, she covered that all up by making him a painter. Laws, Mrs. Macy says writing a book's easy. She says that book of 'Liza Em'ly's is really too flat for words, and what makes people buy it, she can't see. Well, I shan't buy a copy, I knowthat. I ain't knowed 'Liza Em'ly all my life to go doing things like that now."
With which very common view as to theworks produced by our intimate friends, Miss Clegg rose to take her departure.
"Did—?" asked Mrs. Lathrop, when they next met.
"No—I asked, but not a soul knew. We haven't gotanyman in town as it couldpossiblybe. They was all discussing it, too. Mrs. Macy and Mrs. Fisher is really going to town to see 'Liza Em'ly and take up their ideas to talk over. Mrs. Macy is putting her ideas down on a piece of paper, so as to be sure she has 'em with her. Mrs. Fisher's keeping hers in her head, for she says if she lost them, anybody might write her book. They think they'll go Tuesday. I hope they will, 'cause if they do, they'll come straight from the train and tell me, and then I'll come straight over and tell you."
With which amicable arrangement Miss Clegg again took her departure.
It was quite two weeks before affairs shaped themselves for Mrs. Macy and Mrs. Fisher to go to the city on their literary errand, but they managed it at last, and youmay be very sure that Mrs. Lathrop peeked eagerly and earnestly out of her window many times the afternoon after their journey. They came up to call upon Miss Clegg and narrate their adventures quite according to their usual friendly ideals, and directly they took their leave that good lady hied herself rapidly to Mrs. Lathrop to tell the tale.
Mrs. Lathrop met her at the door and both sank into chairs immediately.
"Well, what—" said the older lady then, and her younger friend rejoined promptly:
"Perfectly dumfounding; nothing like it was ever knowed before or ever will be again."
"Wha—?" began Mrs. Lathrop.
"They're both completely paralyzed. Mrs. Fisher can't say a word, and Mrs. Macy can't keep still."
"Wha—?" began Mrs. Lathrop again.
Miss Clegg drew a sharp breath. "They went to see 'Liza Em'ly, an' they saw her. My goodness heavens, I should think theydid see her. Mrs. Macy says if any one ever supposed as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon was any wonder, they'd ought to go to the city an' see 'Liza Em'ly, and the Hanging Gardens would keep their mouths shut forever after."
"Wha—?" began Mrs. Lathrop for the third time.
But Miss Clegg was now quite ready to discharge her full duty. "Seems 'Liza Em'ly's book went into the twentieth edition yesterday," she said, opening her eyes and mouth with great expressiveness. "They knew that before they got there, for you can believe Mrs. Macy or not, just as you please, Mrs. Lathrop, but there were actually signboards saying so stuck up all along in the fields as the train went by. The train-boy had the books for sale on the train, too, and kept dropping 'em on top of 'em all the way, but they didn't mind that, for Mrs. Fisher read her book as fast as she could until he picked it up again, and she read to good purpose, for this afternoon she asked for a glassof water, and while I was out with her in the kitchen getting it, she told me there isn't a mite of doubt but Mrs. Macy is in the book, and Doctor Carter of Meadville is in right along with her. Mrs. Fisher says 'Liza Em'ly has called her Miss Grace and him Doctor Wagner of Lemonadetown, but she says she knew 'em instantly by the description of how they was in love; she says you'd recognize how they was in love right off. I must say, Mrs. Lathrop, as I think 'Liza Em'ly ought to be very careful what she writes about real people if you can tell 'em as quick as that; but anyway, they got to town and took a street car, and then, lo and behold, if their first little surprise wasn't the finding as 'Liza Em'ly has stopped living where she lives and gone to live in a hotel, so they had to go to the hotel, too, and when they got there, what do you think?—If 'Liza Em'ly wasn't giving a reception to celebrate the twentieth edition!"
"Wh—?" cried Mrs. Lathrop.
"Yes, indeed," continued Miss Clegg,"certainly—yes, I should say so, too. If they didn't get a fine shock over 'Liza Em'ly and her hotel and her reception and the whole thing, Mrs. Macy says she'll never know what a shock is when she sees it. Seems they was shoved into one end of a elevator without so much as by your leave and out the other end before they'd caught their breath, and then they found themselves in a room with flowers all tied up in banners, and Elijah, with his hair parted in the middle, passing cups of tea which a lady, with her muff on her head, was pouring out, while 'Liza Em'ly sat on a table swinging her feet in shoes she never bought inthistown, Mrs. Macy'll take her Bible oath, and a dress that trained on the floor even from the table."
"My heavens alive!" cried Mrs. Lathrop.
"Oh, that isn't anything," said Susan, "just you wait. Well, and so Mrs. Macy says you can maybe imagine their feelings when they found their two perfectly respectable and well brought up selves in the middle of such a kind of a party! One man and one girl was underthe piano playing cat's cradle, while another man was doing a sum on the wallpaper with a hatpin. Mrs. Macy says she wouldn't have been surprised at nothing after that, you'd think, but she says when it comes to 'Liza Em'ly nowadays, you don't know even what you're thinkin', for you'd suppose 'Liza Em'ly would at least have looked ashamed of her feet and her train. Instead of that, she just clapped her hands and said, 'Hello, home-folks,' which nearly sent Mrs. Fisher over backwards. Elijah saw them then, andhehad the good manners to drop a teacup, but even he didn't look anywhere near as used up as in Mrs. Macy's opinion a man away from business with his hair parted in the middle in the middle of the afternoon had ought to look. He gave them chairs though, and they set down between a young lady as was smoking a cigarette and another as was very carefully powdering herself in a little mirror set in her pocketbook. Just then there was a noise like a awful crash and a hailstorm, and after they'd both jumped and Mrs. Macycome near dislocating her hip, they see that a man was beginning on the piano. Well, Mrs. Macy sayssuchpiano-playing her one hope is as she may be going to be spared hereafter; she says he'd skitter up the piano with both hands, and then he'd bang his way back to where he belonged, and every time he hit the very bottom, he'd give his head a flop and jerk down another lot of hair over his eyes. Mrs. Macy says she never see a man with so much loose hair where he could manage it, for he kept getting down more and more till he looked like a cocoanut and nothing else, so help Mrs. Macy, and then, when he was completely hid, he hit the piano four cracks and folded his arms and was done."
"Mercy on—!" cried Mrs. Lathrop.
"I should say so," continued Miss Clegg, "and Mrs. Macy says everybody clapped like mad, and then 'Liza Em'ly come to earth and went and threw her arms around his neck, which to Mrs. Macy's order of thinking, didn't look much like she was going to marry Elijah. And then, before they could shakehands or say good-by or do a thing, a boy came in with a lot of telegrams on a tray, and while 'Liza Em'ly was fixing half a spectacle in one eye to read 'em, a young lady dressed in snakeskins, and very little else, jumped into the room right over the backs of their two chairs in a most totally unlooked-for way, and then began to spin about and wriggle here and there and in and out generally, and Mrs. Fisher got up and said they really must go, and Elijah showed 'em to the door with the lady in snakeskins making figure eights around them all three and 'Liza Em'ly throwing a rose at them and kissing her hand till somehow they got into the hall. They walked down flights of stairs then till they thought there never would be a bottom anywhere, and then they looked at each other, and after a while they got where they could speak, and then they came home."
"Well, wha—?" began Mrs. Lathrop.
"Me, too," said Susan, "I think it'sawful! And the worst of it is for her to be the minister's daughter. Think of it! They boughta paper as had her picture on it and a account of the reception as they'd just been at. It said Herr Schnitzel Beerstein played, so they know his name now, and Madame Kalouka S-k-z-o-h danced, so when it comes to her name, they ain't much better off than they were before. Wherever they looked they see posters ofDeacon Tooker Talks, and people in the cars was all discussing the book. Two ministers is going to take it for a text to-morrow, and the candy stores has all got little candy boxes like beds with a chocolate drop for Deacon Tooker and a gum-drop for his wife."
"Well, wha—" began Mrs. Lathrop.
"I don't know," said Miss Clegg. "The book's made right out of this community, and since I've read it myself, I can see who every one isexceptDeacon Tooker. I can't see who Deacon Tooker is, for we haven't got anybody like him. He's talking the whole time; in fact, the book is all what he says about everything, and all his wife ever does is to wake up when he shakes her andthen go to sleep again. The idea's very remarkable of a man laying awake chattering to himself all night long, but I never heard of any such person here. Our only deacon is Deacon White, and he never talks atall."
"I wonder if the min—" began Mrs. Lathrop.
"No, I don't believe so," said Miss Clegg. "My goodness, suppose he did and hit something like they did! No, I hope he won't ever think of it, and as for 'Liza Em'ly, I hope she'll remember her married father and mother soon and remember her quiet and loving home, too, before she gets in the habit of having parties like that very often. My gracious, think of going to call on a girl as you see christened and having a snake-lady gartering her way up your leg while you were trying to say good-by and get away alive. Mrs. Macy says the creature was diving here and wriggling there and slipping under tables and over chairs in a way as made your flesh go creeping right after her. Well, it's clear 'Liza Em'ly's started on amost singular career. Mrs. Macy says first they give her a sandwich with a bow of ribbon on it, and she swallowed the ribbon; and then they give her a piece out of a cake that they said had a lucky quarter in it, and she's almost sure she swallowed the quarter, so maybe she was prejudiced."
"Well, I—" began Mrs. Lathrop.
"They felt the same way," said Miss Clegg; "they've come home very much used up. Mrs. Macy says you can talk to her about the days of ancient Rome and the way folks act underground in Paris, but she says she knows positively as what she and Mrs. Fisher saw with their own eyes in 'Liza Em'ly's sitting-room beat all those kind of little circuses hollow. Mrs. Macy says she's seen enough of what they call high life now to last her till she dies of shame. She says the only bright spot in the whole thing is as 'Liza Em'ly's nose isn't anywhere near as prominent as you'd think any more, and she's got a automobile and is going to Europe when the book goes into its fiftieth edition."
"Well—I—" mused Mrs. Lathrop.
"Yes, and I will, too," said Miss Clegg. "I'll go straight home and do it. I'm awful tired. And it bothers me more than I like to own not knowing who Deacon Tooker is. You know my nature, Mrs. Lathrop, and although I was never one to try to find out things nor to talk about 'em after I've managed to find 'em out, still I never was one to like not to know things, and I must say I do want to know who Deacon Tooker is. Well, they say all things comes to him who waits, so I think I won't stop here any longer. Good-by, and when I do find out, you can count on my coming right over to tell you."
"Goo—" began Mrs. Lathrop.
But Miss Clegg had shut the door after her.
There was nothing small or mean or economical about Jathrop Lathrop, now that he had turned out rich. He was the soul of generosity, the epitome of liberality, the concentrated essence of filial devotion as expressed in checks and carte-blanche orders directed at his mother.
One of his earliest kind thoughts was to have Mrs. Lathrop's home completely modernized, and as Susan Clegg lived next door and was his mother's best and dearest friend, he decided to build her house over, too.
To that end he hunted up the highest-priced architect of whom he could hear and asked to have designs submitted forthwith. The highest-priced architect readily undertook thereconstruction of the Lathrop and Clegg domiciles, but being too occupied to go down into the country and look over the field personally, he delegated one of his youngest and most promising assistants to accomplish the task, and the young and promising assistant forthwith packed his dress-suit case and set off.
He was an assistant of most extraordinary youth and almost unbelievable promise, and he saw a chance to plan colleges (endowed by J. Lathrop, Esq.), palaces (to be built for Lathrop, the millionaire), possibly to be commissioned with the overseeing of the artistic development of some new, up-springing city (Lathropville, Alaska, or something of that sort), if he should only succeed in at once accomplishing a close union of feeling with the golden offspring of our old friend. His first really rich client is to a young débutant in bricks just what a well-hung picture is to the budding artist, or a song before royalty is to a singer. Such being the well-known facts of life the young and promising assistantfully intended to do himself proud in the reconstruction of the two houses consigned by Jathrop's benevolence to his tender mercies.
The young architect came to town and went to the hotel (at Jathrop's expense). He spent the next ten days in going twice each day to study his task, sketch its realities and idealities, and also make the acquaintance of Mrs. Lathrop and Susan Clegg, for he was a young man of new and novel ideas, and one of his newest and most novel ideas was to build a house which would really suit those who were to live in it. He was so young that he had no conception as to how this was to be done, nor the faintest inkling as to what a Titanic-crossed-with-Promethean undertaking it would be to do, if even he did know how; but he felt—and most truly—that it was a new view of the relation between house and builder, and he felt proud over having thought it out for himself as well as for all time to come. Then he had another novel idea—not so altogether hisown, however—which was that a house should "express its dweller." This latter idea was quite beyond the grasp of his present audience and just a little beyond his own grasp, too, but he was brave and conscientious and didn't see it that way at all.
It has taken some time to lay out all these premises, but if there is any one with whom one can desire close acquaintance it is surely the man who comes to build over a comfortable and in-most-ways-satisfactory home of long years' standing, so I trust that the minutes have not been altogether wasted.
Mrs. Lathrop and Miss Clegg received the young man and his mission in such states of mind as were entirely compatible with their individual outlook over life.
"I must say I'm far from altogether liking him," Susan said to her friend, a very real note of disapproval in her voice, one day toward the end of the week. Mrs. Lathrop was rocking in her new old-gold-plush stationary rocker and listened as usual with interest. "He's on the woodpile now, drawinga three-quarter profile of the woodshed. The way he perches anywhere and then goes to work and draws anything would surely make an English snail pull his castle right into his house along with him, for I've got a feeling as there's nothing about me as he hasn't got in his book by this time, and there's many things he's drawn as I never would choose to have the world in general looking over. I'm sure I don't want no view of my woodshed going down to posterity for one thing. I've had to have a woodshed, but I've never admired it, and the way I've nailed anything handy over holes in it is far from my usual way of mending. You've always mended 'hit or miss,' Mrs. Lathrop, and after years of such doings as was more worthy a poorhouse than a Christian, heaven has seen fit to reward your patching with a son fresh from the Klondike, but I've always darned blue with blue and brown with brown, and the only spot in my whole life that I haven't carefully and neatly matched the stripes in is my woodshed, and now to-daywhen I was thinking very seriously of using it up for the kitchen-stove next winter, if there isn't a young man from New York out drawing it in black and white, and ten to one he'll print it in some unexpected Sunday paper marked 'Jathrop Lathrop's mother's friend Susan Clegg's woodshed!' That'll be a pretty kettle of fish, and you needn't tell me that there won't be somebody to perk up and say, 'No smoke without some fire,' which will be as good as throwing it in my teeth that I'm one of those as use a safety pin when a button's off, when it's a thing as I've never done and never would do even if there is a proverb that a pin's a pin for all that."
Susan paused here and looked upon her friend in serious question. Mrs. Lathrop, however, merely continued to rock pleasantly. A change had come over the spirit of her rocking since the return of Jathrop. She had rocked for years with a more or less apologetic air, as if she knew that there were those who might criticize her action and yet she couldn't personally feel that she reallyought to give it up. But now she rocked with a wide, free swing as if life was life and if she liked to rock, she was going to rock, and if there were those who objected, they could object—she didn't care. There is nothing that so quickly develops an independent standpoint as the possession of money; there is nothing that so fully produces a conviction that one is thoroughly justified in doing just exactly what one pleases; there is nothing that leads to quite the same lofty indifference as to whether what pleases one pleases or displeases all the rest of the world.
We have but to look at Jathrop to see that this is true. Of all the tame, mild-eyed, listless young individuals, Jathrop was the worst, falling asleep on an average of three times an afternoon in school, and never keeping conscious a whole evening. Whether a sudden change in Jathrop's character was the cause of making him a financial power or whether his Klondike-acquired bank account was the cause of his awakening, it still is afact that now in his quiet way he was a very live person.
Jathrop was indifferent to a degree, also, as witness his appearance with his Chinese boy whom everybody took to be his wife with his great baggy trousers and pigtail that no respectable boy, Chinese or otherwise, should wear. Of course, it must be acceded that Jathrop was indifferent in that case from ignorance. He did not know what the world was saying.
Perhaps that accounts for the lofty attitude, one might say lofty altitude, of so many of our millionaires. They are so far removed from the world that their ears cannot hear what is being said. People talk in whispers about the "very rich," which makes it doubly hard for them to hear, or hearing, to think that it matters very much, else people would shout. However, when all is said, money does make a difference.
Mrs. Lathrop had been a silent, sat-upon, unaggressively-rocking person for years; now Jathrop had come back from theKlondike and altered all that; it was not that she had turned talkative, it was not that she had so far altered the very foundations of her being as to presume ever to try to contradict any other body's opinions, but the return of Jathrop and the wealth of Jathrop had found expression in his mother through the one medium of almost all expression with her. Mrs. Lathrop had ceased to concern herself as to the length or the vigor of her rocking. It was beautiful to see the energy of independence with which she went back and forth, bringing her feet down with an audible clap whenever she desired fresh impetus.
Susan Clegg did not seem to sympathize. Instead, sitting on her straight chair opposite, she shook her head severely, further discontent making itself visible in the manner of her shake.
But Mrs. Lathrop was proof against all manifestations of disapproval now. She flew back and forth in the old-gold-plush stationary rocker like the happy pendulum of some beatific clock. Jathrop was home.Jathrop was rich. Jathrop would buy her anything she wanted.
"I d'n know, I'm sure, Mrs. Lathrop," Susan went on, the discontent ringing somewhat more distinctly in her tone, "as I'm much taken with this idea of building us over, even if Jathrop does mean it kindly. I know there's a many as would nigh to go out of their senses at the very idea of being made over new for nothing, but I was never one to go out of my senses easy, and that young man on the woodpile doesn't give me any kind of secure feeling as to what he'll make out of my house. He looks to me like the kind of young man as will open doors square across windows where the knob'll smash the glass sure if you're trying to carry a bureau out at the time of the house-cleaning. The kind of cravats he's got looks to me like his chimneys would be very likely not to draw, and their color gives me a feeling that doughnuts in his house will smell in shut-up closets a week after the frying. You know what shut-up fryings is like after they've had nofresh air for a week, but I wasn't raised that way. When I have fish I have fish and done with it, and when I have onions I have onions, and I ain't very wild over maybe boarding my fish and my onions in my best bonnet henceforth and forever.
"Mrs. Brown was telling me yesterday as she heard of some city woman as had a system of ventilation put into her house, and the rats and mice used it so freely that you couldn't sleep nights. They nested in it, and they fought in it, and they died in it, all as happy and gay as you please, and the family had to have it picked out of the walls in the end and all new paper put on. That's the kind of ideas young men call modern improvements, and that young man on the woodpile is about as modern and improving as they make 'em, I take it.
"I can't say what it is about that young man that I don't like, but, being as I'm always frank and open with you, I will remark that so far I ain't found one thing about him as Idolike. He's been down cellar hammeringon the wall wherever the wind blew him to listeth to hammer, and I had to sit up-stairs and listen without no chance to blow myself. I caught him down on all fours this morning peeking under my front porch, and he didn't even have the manners to blush. As to the way he makes free with the outside ofyourhouse, I wouldn't waste breath with trying to tell you, but my own feeling is that an architect learns his trade on a tight-rope to judge from that young man's manner, and from what I've seen while he was swinging by one arm from your premises, I wouldn't feel safe to take a bath even on top of a chimney, myself."
Susan rose at this and went to the window and looked out; from her expression as she turned, it was plain to be seen that the artist was still at his task.
"I don't know, Mrs. Lathrop," she said, coming back to her seat, "I d'n know, I'm sure, as I'm took with this idea atall. I never was one for favors either given or asked, and although I know this isn't nofavor, but just a evidence of what I've been through with you first and last, still it's done in spite of me and I've got no feeling that I'm going to enjoy it. There's something about kindness as is always most trying to the people who've got no choice but to stand up and be tried. People who get freely given to is in the habit of getting what they don't want and can't use, but I ain't. I'm very far from it. There's nothing in me that's going to be pleased with getting a green hat when I needed a pink coat—no, sir.
"And I don't need nothing. Or if I do, I can buy it. I know Jathrop means it kindly, but Jathrop can't enter into my ways of thinking. Jathrop is looking into life from the Klondike gold-fields and I'm looking at it from my back stoop. That young man was out swishing his pocket handkerchief about and sucking his thumb and holding it up all yesterday afternoon, and about the time I'd made up my mind to bolt him out of the kitchen for a lunatic, he come in and told me he really thought there was windenough in your back yard and my back yard together to run a windmill, in which case a water system could be easy inaugurated. I told him I didn't know you could inaugurate anything but a president, but he said anything as you hadn't had before and thought was going to work fine and be a great improvement could be inaugurated. I told him I supposed I could stand a windmill if you could.
"What do you think—whatdoyou think, Mrs. Lathrop, if that young man didn't ask if he might go and look up the parlor fireplace! Well, I told him he could, and I give him a newspaper to shake his head on after he was done looking, too. He's been in my garret until I bet he knows every trunk label by heart, and I must say I feel as if I'd have very little of my own affairs to tell on Judgment Day if he gets dressed and out of his grave quicker than I get dressed and out of mine. But that isn't all, whatever you may think. There's a many other things about him as I don't like and don't like atall.
"For one thing, he's got a way of looking around as if it was my house that was the main thing and I was the last and smallest piece of cross-paper tied in the kite's tail. To my order of thinking, that's a far from polite way for a young man as Jathrop's hiring and boarding to look on a woman whose house he may thank his lucky stars if he may get the chance to build over. Mrs. Macy says Mrs. Lupey says architects is all like that, but I'm far from seeing why. I don't consider that young man superior atall. I consider his brains as very far from being equal to my own. When he asks me to hold the other end of his tape-line and does it just as if a pin would do as well, only I was handier at the moment, I'm very far from feeling flattered. I never saw just such a young man before, and when I think of being delivered up to him—house and all—for the summer, I'm also very far from feeling easy. I d'n know, I'm sure, what will be the end of this, but I do know that it looks to me like a pretty bad business."
Susan paused again and looked at her friend, but Mrs. Lathrop just rocked onward. Life had widened so tremendously for her that she couldn't possibly be perturbed in any way or by anything. If the roof fell in, Jathrop would buy her another, and if she were smashed by it, Jathrop would have her put together again. Why worry?
The young man remained ten days in all, and when his visit of investigation was completed, he returned to New York. Jathrop took him to the Lotus Club to wash and to the Yacht Club to lunch and to Claremont in the afternoon (in his motor), and they talked it all over. The young man had his sketches, ideas, ideals, and plans all tied into a neat patent cover with cost-estimates lightly glued in the back. Jathrop was deeply interested, and the young man expounded the inmost soul of all his measurements and proposed altitudes and alterations. The young man reminded Jathrop of his pertinent hypothesis that a house should express its owner. Jathrop's own view of "express"was that if you could pay the bill, it beat freighting all out of sight, but he felt that perhaps the young man meant something different, so he merely gave him a cigar.
The young man took the cigar and proceeded to elucidate his hypothesis by explaining that, having carefully studied both Mrs. Lathrop and Miss Clegg, he should suggest that Miss Clegg's house express her by being severely Doric and that Mrs. Lathrop's should be rambling and Queen Anne with wide, free floor spaces. He further suggested a hyena-headed door-knocker for Miss Clegg and an electric button to press, so that the door opened of itself for Mrs. Lathrop. Also a roofless pergola to connect the two houses. Jathrop liked all his ideas and sketches very much, but as he was really good-hearted and had not the least desire to present green hats to those who wanted pink coats, he had the whole book sent down to his mother and begged her to carefully inspect it in company with Susan Clegg. They inspected it.
"Well," said Susan, "all I can say is I'll have to carry this book home and sit down and try and make out what hedoesmean. He's done it very neat, that I will say, but between crosses and dotted lines and your house behind mine like two Roman emperors on a cameo pin, I can't make head or tail of what's going to be done to either of us. I can't even find my own house in this plan on some pages, and as for this bird-cage walk that I'm supposed to run back and forth in like a polar bear in a circus all day long, my own opinion is that if it's got no roof, it's going to be very hard indeed about the snow in winter, for I'll have to carry every single solitary shovelful to one end or the other so as to throw it out of either your kitchen window or mine. That's all the good that will do us."
Mrs. Lathrop swung to and fro, totally unconcerned. No sort of proposition could disconcert her now. If the house when built over proved a failure, Jathrop would build her another.
Susan took the prettily-bound portfolio home with her and spent the evening over it. She studied it profoundly and to some purpose, for the next morning when she brought it back to Mrs. Lathrop, it held but few secrets, other than those of a purely technical character, for her.
"I've been all through it," she said to her friend, "and now I can't really tell what I think atall. But this Idoknow, if we ever really get these houses, I will be running back and forth from dawn to dark through that wire tunnel in a way as'll make the liveliest polar bear that ever kept taking a fresh turn look like a petrified tree beside me. Why, only to keep the conveniences he's got put in scoured bright would take me all of every morning in my house, to say nothing of wiping up the floors, for Jathrop isn't intending to buy us no carpets ever. We're to sit around on cherry when we ain't on Georgia pine, and he's got every mantelpiece marked with the kind of wood we're to burn in it, and he's been kind enough to tell us whatcolored china we're to use in each bedroom. We're to shoot our clothes into the cellar through a hole from up-stairs and wash 'em there in those two square boxes as we couldn't make out. That thing I read 'angle-hook' is a 'inglenook,' and so far from sitting in it to fish we're to set in it to look at the fire, if we can get any mahogany to burn in that particular fireplace.
"Those fans are stairs, we're to go up 'em the way the arrow points, and heaven knows where or how we're to get down again. What we thought was beds is closets, and what we thought was closets is beds, and it's evident with all his hopping and hanging he didn't really charge his mind with us atall, for he's got a bedroom in your house marked 'Mr. Lathrop,' when the last bit of real thought would have made him justhaveto remember as you're a widow. He's give me a sewing-room when he must have seen that I always do my mending in the kitchen, and he's give us each enough places to wash to keep the whole community clean. I must say he'stried to be fair, for he's give both houses the same number of rooms and the same names to each room. We've each got a summer kitchen, but he left the spring and autumn to scratch along anyhow; we've each got a bathtub, and we've each got a china-closet as well as a pantry, which shows he had very little observation of the wayyoukeep things in order."
Mrs. Lathrop absorbed all this with the happy calm of a contented (and rocking) sponge.
"But what takes me is the way he's not only got a finger, but has just smashed both hands, into every pie on the place," Susan continued. "He's moved the chicken-house and give us each a horse and give the cow a calf without even so much as 'by your leave.' I don't know which will be the most surprised if this plan comes true—me with my horse, or the cow finding herself with a calf in the fall as well as the spring this year. Then it beats me where he's going to get all his trees, for both houses is a blooming bower, andthe way tree-toads will sing me to sleep shows he's had no close friends in the country. Trees brushing your window mean mosquitos at night and spiders whenever they feel so disposed. And that ain't all, whatever you may think, for you haven't got a window-pane over four inches square and, as every window has fifty-six of them, I see your windows going dirty till out of very shame I get 'em washed for your funeral. And that ain't all, whatever you may think, either, for the snow is going to lodge all around all those little gables and inglenooks he's trimmed your roof with, and you'll leak before six months goes by, or I'll lose my guess."
But it was impossible to impress Mrs. Lathrop. If things leaked, Jathrop would have them mended. She just rocked and rocked.
"I don't know what to write Jathrop about these plans," Susan Clegg said slowly. "Of course, I've got to write him something, and I declare I don't know what to say. Hemeans it kindly, and there's nothing in the wide world that makes things so hard as when people mean kindly. You can do all sorts of things when people is enemies, but when any one means anything kindly, you've got to eat it if it kills you. Mrs. Allen was telling me the other day that since she's took a vow to do one good action daily, she's lost most all of her friends.
"That just shows how people feel about being grabbed by the neck and held under till you feel you've done enough good to 'em. Jathrop means this well, but I've got a feeling as we'll go through a great deal of misery being built over, and I really don't think we'll be so much better off after we've survived. You'll have to be torn right down, and the day that that young man was up on my porch post, he said he couldn't be positive that I'd keep even my north wall. He pounded it all over in the dining-room until the paper was a sight, and then when he saw how very far from pleased I was, he tried to get out of it by saying the wall would have to come down,anyhow. I think he saw toward the last that he'd gone too far in a many little ways. I didn't like his taking the hens off their nests to measure how wide the henhouse was. I consider a hen is one woman when she's seated at work and had ought not to be called off by any man alive. But, laws, that young man wasn't any respecter of work or hens or anything else! He called himself an artist, and since I've been studying these plans, I've begun to think as he was really telling the truth, for artists is all crazy, and anything crazier than these plans I never did see. Not content with having us wash in the sink and the cellar, we're to wash under the front stairs, too, not to speak of all but swimming up-stairs."