Mrs. Lathrop just smiled and rocked more.
"I'm not in favor of it," said Miss Clegg, rising to go. "I don't believe it'll be any real advantage. We'll be like the Indians that die as soon as you civilize 'em—that's what we'll be. The windmill will keep us awake nights, and you don't use any water to speakof, anyhow. So I don't see why I should be kept awake. As for that laughing tiger he's give me on my front door, I just won't have it, and that's all there is about it. A laughing tiger's no kind of a welcome to people you want, and when people come that I don't want, I don't need no tiger to let 'em know it. No, I never took to that young man, and I don't take to his plans. I don't like those four pillars across my front any more than I do that mouse-hole without a roof that he's give me to go to you in. I consider it a very poor compliment to you, Mrs. Lathrop, that he's fixed it so if I once start to go to see you, I've got to keep on, for I can't possibly get out so to go nowhere else."
Susan Clegg paused. Mrs. Lathrop rocked.
"Well?" said Miss Clegg, impatiently.
But Mrs. Lathrop just rocked. If Susan didn't like it, she needn't like it. Jathrop would pay the bill.
Susan Clegg went home, her mind still unconvinced.
Many things against which we protest bitterly at first we eventually come to accept and possibly even to enjoy. It was that way, to a degree at least, with the reconstruction of the houses of Susan Clegg and her friend Mrs. Lathrop, neither lady being particularly charmed with the idea when it was originally presented, and Miss Clegg being even frankly displeased with the plans that were sent down for approval. But the plans were accepted, nevertheless, after some alterations, and by easy stages Susan Clegg and Mrs. Lathrop arrived at that degree of philosophy which enabled them to face with commendable composure the fact that they must vacate their dwellings for an indefinitely extended period.
It was not that Miss Clegg had ceased to entertain doubts as to the advisability of "being renovated," nor was it that Mrs. Lathrop looked forward gladly to a temporary transplanting of herself and her rocker. But Jathrop's glory as a millionaire was now so strongly to the fore in their minds that both bowed, more or less resignedly, to his wishes.
"I must say I d'n know how this thing is going to work out in the end," Susan observed to Mrs. Lathrop, as the date set for the beginning of the work drew nearer. "I'm against it myself, but I ain't against Jathrop, so I'm giving up my views just to see what will happen. My own opinion is as it's all very well to build over most anything, but if your house is to be built over, you've got to get out of it, and I must say as I don't just see as yet when we get out of our houses what we're going to get into. Jathrop says we can go to the hotel, and that he'll pay the bill. Well, I must say it's good he'd pay the bill, for I'd never go to any hotel if somebodyelse didn't pay the bill—I know that. But even if I haven't got the bill to pay, I don't feel so raving, raring mad to go to the hotel. It wouldn't matter to you, Mrs. Lathrop, for nothing ever does matter to you, and anyway, even if anything had mattered to you before, you'd not mind it now that Jathrop's come back. But just the same a hotel does matter to me. They take very little interest in their housekeeping in hotels, and no matter who's eat off of what, if they can use it again—and they generally can—they always do. Why, they churn up the melted odds and ends of ice-cream and serve 'em out as fresh-made with that cheerful countenance as loveth no giver. And what we'd throw to the cat they scrape right back into the soup pot, and glad enough to get it. I don't suppose you'd mind what you ate, nor what kind of a cloth had dusted your plate, but I was brought up to be clean, and I don't want to sleep with spiders swinging themselves down to see how I do it. No, Mrs. Lathrop, I can't consider no hotel, not even in common affection for Jathrop.I'd go down a well on my hands and knees to dig coal for him if necessary, or I'd do any other thing as a woman as respects Jathrop might do if she didn't respect herself more. But live in a hotel I will not, and you can write and tell him so, forIdon't want to hurt his feelings. But all kindness has its limits, and if I let a boy architect run through the heart of my house, I consider as I've done enough to prove my Christian spirit for one year."
"What—?" ventured Mrs. Lathrop, but Susan Clegg went right on.
"I don't see where we're ever going to put our things while they haul our walls down and rock our foundations. That young man says there won't be a room as won't have to have something done to it, and I don't want my furniture spoiled, even if I do have to have my house built over against my will. My furniture is very good furniture, Mrs. Lathrop. It's been oiled, and rubbed, and polished ever since it was bought, and none of the chairs has ever had their middles steppedon, and nothing of mine has got a sunk hole from sitting,—no, sir! My mattresses is all slept even, from side to side, and there ain't a bottle-mark in the whole house. It's a sin to take and wreck a happy home like mine. I shall have untold convenience hereafter, but I shall never take any more real comfort. That's what I see a-coming. And where under the sun we are going to put our things the Lord only knows."
Mrs. Lathrop was one of those who rarely take a question as a personal matter. She made no suggestion; she just rocked.
"I can see what I've got to be doing," said Susan, a clearer light breaking. "I've got to be getting up and seeing where you and me can go, and where we can put our goods. I don't want to live under the same roof with you if I can possibly help it. And not to do it's going to be hard, for knowing we're such friends, folks is going to naturally plan to take us together. I don't want to hurt your feelings, Mrs. Lathrop, and yet I can't in Christian courtesy deny that to live with youwould drive me distracted, and so I shan't consider it for a minute. Not for one single minute. Still, I can't live far from you, for we are old friends, and the brother that leaveth all else to cleave to his brother wasn't more close when he done it than I am to you. Besides, if they're building our houses over, I shall naturally be pretty lively in watching them do it, and as one of the houses is yours, you'll like to be where I can easy tell you how it's being done. And so it goes without saying we've got to be close together. But not too close together."
All these premises were so undeniably true that the passive Mrs. Lathrop could not have gainsaid them even had she been so disposed; which she wasn't.
Accordingly, upon the very next day, Susan began her search for an abiding place, and the right abiding place was—as she had predicted—not to be easily found.
"There's plenty of places," said Susan, when she returned from her task, "but they don't any of them suit my views. You'reeasily suited, Mrs. Lathrop, but I'm not and never will be. I'm of a nature that never is to be lightly took in vain, nor yet to be just lightly took either. And no one isn't going to put me in a room that'll be sunny in July, nor yet in one that will be shady in September. No room as is pleasant in September can help being most hot in summer; and although I'm willing to be hot in my own house, I will not be hot in any place where I pay board. You'll do very well almost anywhere, Mrs. Lathrop, for Lord knows whatever other virtues you may have, being particular could never be left at your door in no orphaned basket. But I'm different. Mrs. Brown would take us until young Doctor Brown and Amelia gets back, and Mrs. Allen would be glad of the very dust of our feet; but I couldn't go to either of those two places. Mrs. Brown would have to have both of us, for there's no one else to take you, and Mrs. Allen would want to read us her poetry. It's all right to write if you ain't got brains or time for nothing better, but Ihave, and I ain't going to knowingly board myself with no one as hasn't."
Mrs. Lathrop made no comment. She merely rocked and waited.
"As for our things," Susan continued, "I've found where we can putthem. It wasn't easy, but I never give up, and Mr. Shores says he's willing we should have all the back of his upper part. I told him as I should want to be able to go to 'em any time, and he said far be it from him to desire to prevent no woman from visiting what was her own. I could see from his tone as he was thinking of his wife as run off with his clerk, and it does beat all how you can even make a misery out of a woman's visiting her furniture if you feel so inclined. So the goods is off our minds, and now it's just us as has got to be put somewheres till our own doors is opened to us again. I must say I'd like to know where we'll end."
On the very next day the solution was effected.
"I've got it all fixed," said Susan, returning,dovelike, with the evening shadows. "Mrs. Macy'll take one of us and Gran'ma Mullins the other. Gran'ma Mullins says with Hiram gone to the Klondike and Lucy gone to her father, either you or me can have their room; only for the love of heaven we mustn't look like Hiram in bed; for her heart is aching and breaking, and the car-wheels of his train ain't grinding on any track half as much as they're grinding in her tenderest spot. Now the question is, Mrs. Lathrop, which'll go which, and it's a thing as I must consider very carefully, for Lord knows I don't want to be no more miserable than I've got to be. And it goes without saying I wouldn't choose to live with Gran'ma Mullins, nor Mrs. Macy, nor nobody else if I had my choice. I'm too much give to liking to live alone with myself. Of course, Mrs. Macy is a pleasanter disposition than Gran'ma Mullins, for she ain't got Hiram to wear my bones into skin over; but I feel as living with Mrs. Macy all summer will surely lead to her trying to make it come out evenfor the rent up to next January, so I would have to worry over that. Then, too, even if Gran'ma Mullins is wearing, she's soothing too, and I shall need soothing this summer. I declare, Mrs. Lathrop, I can't well see how I'm ever going to pack up my things. I can't see what's to keep 'em from getting scratched and the corners knocked. How can I fix a toilet set smooth together? A toilet set don't never fit smooth together; the handles always stick out. And the frying-pan's got a handle too, and a clothesbar ain't any ways adaptable to nothing. Chair legs is very bad and table legs is worse, and there's Mother's wedding-present clock as found its level years ago and ain't been stirred since. Father give it to her, and it's so heavy I couldn't stir it if I wanted to, anyhow. But I don't want to stir it. It's my dead mother's last wish, and as such is sacred. I wasn't to stir Father nor the clock. It's a French clock, and it's marble. It's a handsome clock. It was Father's one handsome present to Mother. And now I've got to put it in storage. Andthen there's our hens. I don't know but what it'd be wisest to set right to eating them. I know one thing—I'll never board chickens. Oh, Mrs. Lathrop, this is going to be an awful business! Think of the carpets! Think of the window shades, and my dead mother's lamberquins! Think of the things in the garret! And the things in the cellar! And the things in the closets! I don't know, I'm sure, how we'll ever get moved."
As the days went on, the slow trend of life brought the problem still more pressingly to the front. Susan decided to lodge herself with Gran'ma Mullins. Gran'ma Mullins, whose heart was still very heavy over Hiram's escape from the home nest, would have preferred Mrs. Lathrop. Mrs. Lathrop's capacity for listening would have meant much to Gran'ma Mullins in these hours of bitter loneliness; but Mrs. Macy wanted Mrs. Lathrop, and Susan didn't want Mrs. Macy, so the outcome of that question was a fore-gone conclusion.
When all was settled, Jathrop dispatched emissaries who, with a deftness and dexterity possessed only by the hirelings of millionaires, descended on Mrs. Lathrop, and in the course of a single afternoon transferred her, her rocker, and the whole contents of her bedroom to Mrs. Macy's. The emissaries offered to do the same thing for Susan Clegg, but she rejected their aid. Alone and unassisted Susan wrestled with her packing, and no one ever knew just how she accomplished it. It took her several days, and it introduced a new order of things into not only her life but her speech. Her struggle was valiant, but towards the end she had to call on Felicia Hemans and Sam Durny for help. When, on Saturday night, Susan arrived at Gran'ma Mullins's, her first observation was that when the Lord got through with the creation it was small wonder He arranged to rest on the seventh day.
"I d'n know as I shall ever get up again," she said to Gran'ma Mullins, who was watchingher take off her bonnet. "A apron as has been used to carry things in for six days is bright and starched beside me. Oh, Gran'ma Mullins, pray on your folded knees as Hiram won't come back rich and want to build you over! Anything but that."
"Oh, if he'll only come back, it's all I'll ask!" returned Gran'ma Mullins sadly. "To think he can't get there for four weeks yet. And think of Hiram in a boat! Why Hiram can't even see a mirror tipped back and forth without having to go right where he'll be the only company. And then to be in a boat! A boat is such a tippy thing. I read about one man being drowned in one last week. They're hooking for him with dynamite to see if they can even get a piece of him back for his wife. His wife isn't much like Lucy, I guess. Oh, Susan, you'll never know what I've stood from Lucy! Nobody will."
Miss Clegg shook her head and looked about her quarters with an eye that was dubious.
"I've got some eggs for supper," said Gran'ma Mullins, "one for you and one for me, and one for either of us as can eat two."
"I can eat two," said Susan, who thought best to declare herself at the outset.
"Is your things all out of the house?" Gran'ma Mullins asked, as they seated themselves at the table.
"Oh, yes," answered Susan, "everything is out! Towards the last we acted more like hens being fed than anything else, but we got everything finished."
"Did you get the clock out safe?"
Susan's expression altered suddenly. "The clock! Oh, the clock! Whatdoyou think happened to that clock? And I didn't feel to mind it, either."
"Oh, Susan, you didn't break it!"
"I did. And in sixty thousand flinders. And I'm glad, too. Very glad. It's a sad thing as how we may be found out, no matter how careful we sweep up our trackings. And I don't mind telling you as the bitterestpill in my cup of clearing out has been that very same clock."
"It was such a handsome clock," said Gran'ma Mullins, opening her naturally open countenance still wider. "Oh, Susan! What did happen?"
"You thought it was a handsome clock," said Susan, "and so did I. It was such a handsome clock that we weren't allowed to pick it up and look at it. Father screwed it down with big screws, so we couldn't, and he wet 'em so they rusted in. I had a awful time getting those screws out to-day, I can tell you. You get a very different light on a dead and gone father when you're trying to get out screws that he wet thirty-five years ago. Me on a stepladder digging under the claws of a clock for two mortal hours! And when I got the last one out, I had to climb down and wake my foot up before I could do the next thing. Then I got a block and a bed-slat, and I proceeded very carefully to try how heavy that handsome clock—that handsome marble clock—might be. I put theblock beside it, and I put the bed-slat over the block and under the clock. Then I climbed my ladder again, and then I bore down on the bed-slat. Well, Gran'ma Mullins, you can believe me or not, just as you please, but it's a solemn fact that nothing but the ceiling stopped that clock from going sky-high. And nothing but the floor stopped me from falling through to China. I come down to earth with such a bang as brought Felicia Hemans running. And the stepladder shut up on me with such another bang as brought Sam Durny."
"The saints preserve us!" ejaculated Gran'ma Mullins.
"It wasn't a marble clock atall," confessed Susan. "It was painted wood. That was why Father screwed it down. Oh, men are such deceivers! And the best wife in the world can't develop 'em above their natural natures. I expect it was always a real pleasure to Father to think as Mother and me didn't know that marble clock was wood. I don't know what there is about a man asmakes his everyday character liking to deceive and his Sunday sense of righteousness satisfied with just calling it fooling. Well, he's gone now, and the Bible says 'to him as hath shall be given,' so I guess he's settling up accounts somewheres. Give me the other egg!"
After supper they stepped over to Mrs. Macy's, which was next door, and the four sat on the piazza in the pleasant spring twilight. Mrs. Macy was so happy over having Mrs. Lathrop instead of Susan Clegg that she smiled perpetually. Mrs. Lathrop sat and rocked in her old-gold-plush rocker. Gran'ma Mullins and Susan Clegg occupied the step at the feet of the other two.
"Well, Susan," Mrs. Macy remarked meditatively, "I never looked to see you leave your house any way except feet first. Well, well, this certainly is a funny world."
"Yes," returned Susan, brief for once, "it certainly is."
"It's a very sad world, I think," contributed Gran'ma Mullins with a heavy,heavy sigh. "My goodness, to think this time last spring Hiram was spading up the potato patch! And now where is he?"
"Nobody knows," answered Susan. "See how many years it was till Jathrop come back. But I do hope for your sake, Gran'ma Mullins, that when Hiram does come back he won't take it into his head to buy this house and build it over for you."
Gran'ma Mullins looked at Mrs. Macy, and Mrs. Macy looked back at Gran'ma Mullins, and a message flashed and was answered in the glances.
"Well, Susan," said Gran'ma Mullins with neighborly interest, "you do see that the house needs fixing up, don't you?"
Susan was the owner and Mrs. Macy only the tenant, and the implication was not at all pleasing to her. She turned with the air of the weariest worm that had ever done so and gave Gran'ma Mullins a look that could only be translated as an admonition to mind her own business. Whereupon Gran'maMullins promptly subsided, and the subject did not come up again.
It was on a Monday—the very next Monday—that the workmen arrived and set to work to demolish the outer casing of the homes of Susan and Mrs. Lathrop. Susan went up and stood about for an hour, viewing the way they did it with great but resigned scorn. She went every day thereafter, and her heart was rent at the sight of the sacrilege. Then, to add to her woe, Gran'ma Mullins proved less soothing than had been expected, and Susan suffered keenly at her hands.
"Oh, Mrs. Lathrop," she said one morning, when the exigencies of shopping left the two old friends full freedom of intercourse, "if I'm going to live in that house for this whole summer, the first thing that I'll have to do is either to change Gran'ma Mullins or change me! I can see that. Why, I never heard anything like Gran'ma Mullins' views on Hiram. You've heard Mrs. Macy, and I've told you what Lucy's told me wheneverI've met her, but I never had no idea it was anything like what it is. I'm stark, raving crazy hearing about Hiram. Gran'ma Mullins says no child was ever like Hiram, and I begin to wonder if it ain't so. No child ever made such an impression on his mother before,—I can take my Bible oath on that, for she's talking about him from the time I wake till long after I'm asleep,—and she remembers things in the stillness of the night and wakes me up to hear 'em for fear she'll forget 'em before morning. Last night she was up at two to tell me how Hiram used to shut his eyes before he went to sleep when he was a baby. She said he had a different way of doing it from any other child that's ever been born. He picked it all up by himself. She couldn't possibly tell me just how he did it, but it was most remarkable. He had it in May and well into June the year he was born, but along in July he began to lose it, and by October he opened and shut just like other people's babies. That's what I was woke up to hear, Mrs. Lathrop, andHerod was a sweet and good-tempered mother of ten compared to me as I listened. And then at daybreak if she didn't come in again to explain as Hiram was so different from all other babies that he crept before he walked, and the first of his trying to walk he climbed up a chair leg."
"Why, Jathrop—" volunteered Mrs. Lathrop.
"Of course. They all do. But I must say I don't see how I'm going to stand it till my house is ready to receive me back with open bosom if this is the way she's going on straight along. I wouldn't stay with Mrs. Macy because I was tired of hearing what she said Gran'ma Mullins said about Hiram, but it never once struck me that if I stayed with Gran'ma Mullins I'd have it all to hear straight from the fountain mouth. My lands alive, Mrs. Lathrop, you never hear the beat! Hiram used to wrinkle up his face when she washed it, and he never wanted to have a bath. And he used to bring mud turtles into the house; and whenshe thinks of that and how now he's off for the Klondike, she says she feels like going straight after him. She says she could be very useful in the Klondike. She could polish his pick and his sled-runners, and hang up his snowy things, and wash out his gold and his clothes. She says she can't just see how they wash out gold, but she knows how to polish silver, and she says mother-love like hers can pick up anything. She goes on and on till I feel like going to the Klondike myself. I'm getting a great deal of sympathy for Lucy. Lucy always said she could have been happy with Hiram—maybe—if it hadn't been for his mother. Lucy's got no kind of tender feeling for Gran'ma Mullins, and I certainly don't feel to blame her none."
"Is your—?" asked Mrs. Lathrop, striving towards pleasanter paths.
"Well, it ain't burnt up yet," answered Susan. "I stopped at Mr. Shores' coming back and took a look at it, and I was far from pleased to find the door as opens intothe next room to the room as my furniture is locked up in a little open. Goodness knows who'd opened it, but it looked very much like some one had been trying my door, to me. I asked Mr. Shores, and I saw at a glance as it was news to him, which shows just how much interest he's taking in looking out for my things. He said maybe the cat had pushed it open. The cat! I unlocked my door and went in. The furniture's all safe enough, but it's enough to put any housekeeper's heart through the clothes wringer only to see how it's piled. The beds is smashed flat along the wall, and wherever they could turn a table or a chair upside down and plant something on the wrong side of it, they've done it. As for the way the dishes is combined, I can only say that the Lord fits the back to the burden, so the wash-bowls is bearing everything. They've put Mother's picture in a coal-hod for safety, and the coal-hod is sitting on the bookcase. It's a far from cheering sight, Mrs. Lathrop, but you know I was against being builtover from the start. When I see the walls of my happy home being smashed flat and then picked over like they was raisins to see what'll do to use again, and then when I see my furniture put together in a way as no one living can make head or tail of, and when I see myself woke up at three in the night to be told that sometimes when Hiram was a baby he would go to sleep and sometimes he wouldn't, why I feel as if that Roman as they rolled down hill in a barrel because he wouldn't stay anywhere else where they put him was sitting smoking cross-legged compared to me. I d'n know what I'm going to do this summer. It would just drive an ordinary woman crazy. But I presume I'll survive."
Mrs. Lathrop looked slightly saddened. "Well, Susan,—" she began to murmur sympathetically.
"Oh, it doesn't matter," said Susan. "Of course, if it gets where I can't stand it, we'll just have to change houses, that's all."
Life under the roof of Gran'ma Mullins eventually—and eventually was a matter of days rather than weeks—became unbearable for Susan Clegg. At least, she so decided, and finding opportunity in the fact that both Gran'ma Mullins and Mrs. Macy had gone to market, Susan hastened to her old friend, Mrs. Lathrop, and laid open her fresh burden of woes.
"I can't stand it, Mrs. Lathrop," she declared with strongest emphasis, "I can't stand it. No matter what the Bible says, a saint on a gridiron would smile all over and wriggle for nothing but joy only to think as where he was and wasn't boarding with Gran'ma Mullins. It's awful. That's what it is—awful. I never had no idea that nothingcould be so awful. I've got to where I'm thinking very seriously of leaving my property to Lucy. I'm becoming very sorry for Lucy. Lucy isn't properly appreciated. Why, Hiram was stung by a bee once,—no ordinary bee, but a bee a third bigger than the usual bee,—and it swelled up all different from common, and Gran'ma Mullins thought he was surely going to die right there before her streaming eyes. But Hiram was so bright he remembered about putting mud on bee-bites, and he did it. Only there wasn't no mud, and nobody knew what they could do about it. But Hiram's mind wasn't like the mind of a ordinary person. Hiram's mind is all different, and Hiram said, just as quick as scat, to mix water and earth and make some mud. So they did, and the water and earth, Gran'ma Mullins says, made the finest mud she ever saw. They covered up Hiram's bee-bite with it, and it didn't leave so much as a scar. And now there's Hiram in the Klondike, knowing just what to do when bit by a bee,but without a notion what to put on if a seal catches him unawares. And all this going on hour after hour, Mrs. Lathrop, and me sitting there waiting for my dinner, half mad anyway over the way my dead-and-gone father's home is being torn limb from limb, and in no mood to listen to anything. Oh, laws, no! It's no use. I can't stand it, and I won't either."
Susan paused expressively.
Mrs. Lathrop gasped. "What will—?"
"I'm going to find another place to live right away," Susan went on. "I've too much consideration for you to ask you to go there, Mrs. Lathrop, and besides, I feel it would be exchanging the fire for the stew-pan for me to come here. I'm going this town over this very afternoon, and I think I'll find some place where I can sleep part of the night, at any rate. I guess I got about three quarters of a hour's sleep last night. Gran'ma Mullins woke me up weeping on the foot of my bed before daylight. Just before daylight is her special time forrecollecting how Hiram used to drink milk out of a cup when he was a baby, and how he used to eat candy if anybody gave him any, and other remarkable doings that he did. My lands, I wish Job could have met Gran'ma Mullins! His friends and his boils would have just been pleasant things to amuse him, then. I'm going first to Mrs. Allen, and then I'm going to every one. I shan't make no bones about my errand, for everybody knows Gran'ma Mullins. I'll have the sympathy of the whole community. I need sympathy, and I feel I can soak up a good lot of it if I'm let to."
"How's the—?" asked Mrs. Lathrop.
"They're still pulling 'em down," said Susan gloomily. "It's a awful sight, and one that doesn't give me more strength for Gran'ma Mullins. I shall never have another house that will suit me as mine did, Mrs. Lathrop. I know that Jathrop means it kindly, and I'm far from being one to hold any gift-horse by the tail, but the truth is the truth, and I must say nothing teachesyou to really prize your cupboards like seeing men going through 'em with pick-axes. There was many little conveniences in my house as I never really thought much of until now I see 'em gone forever. But it's a poor cat that lives on spilt milk, so I'll say no more of that, but go back and get ready to hunt up a place to live. For live I must, Mrs. Lathrop, and live I will. And I won't live by eating and drinking and breathing Hiram Mullins the twenty-four hours round, neither."
Miss Clegg's round of visits ended, curiously enough, in her establishing herself with Lucy Mullins.
"Which I don't doubt is a very great surprise to you, Mrs. Lathrop," she confessed to her friend that evening. "But Lucy ran across me in the street, and when she saw me, those two women who met in the Bible and knew all each other's business directly was strangers passing on express trains beside Lucy and me. I took one look at Lucy, and I see she knowed it all. Judge Fitch isgoing to be away a lot this month, seeing where he can hire his witnesses for a big lawsuit, and Lucy says she and me'll be alone and able to be silent from dawn to dark and on through the night. She don't want to have to listen to no manner of talk, she says, and I can have the second floor all alone to myself, for her and her father sleep in the wings down-stairs."
"So you—" said Mrs. Lathrop.
"Yes, I didn't look no more. I was suited, so I didn't see no use in further fussing. I shall tell Gran'ma Mullins to-night and go there to-morrow. And I may in confidence remark as no howling oasis in a desert ever howled for joy the way I'll feel like howling when I get my trunk on a wheelbarrow again. I've spoke for the wheelbarrow at eight o'clock to-morrow morning, so I'll be over at Lucy's and settled before you wake up, Mrs. Lathrop."
The next day Susan went, and, surprising as it may seem, Gran'ma Mullins was singularly content over her going.
"I don't want to make no trouble between friends," said Gran'ma Mullins, clambering up Mrs. Macy's steps to sit with Mrs. Macy and Mrs. Lathrop. "But really, Susan is become most changed since her house is begun to be built over. I wouldn't hardly have known her. I wouldn't say stuck-up and I wouldn't say airy, but I will say as she's most changed. I wouldn't say rude, neither, but I didn't consider it exactly friendly to always either pull her breath in long and loud or else let it out short and sharp whenever I mentioned Hiram. Hiram is my only legal and natural child, and with him in the Klondike, and my heart aching and quaking and breaking for fear the ice'll thaw and let him through into some unexpected volcano all of a sudden, how can I but mention him? You know what Hiram is to me, Mrs. Macy. We haven't lived in these two houses for forty years without your knowing what Hiram is to me. You remember him as a baby, Mrs. Macy, but you don't, Mrs. Lathrop, so I'll tell you what Hiram was asa baby. Hiram was a most remarkable—"
When Mrs. Lathrop saw Susan Clegg again, Miss Clegg was looking far from happy.
"Are you—?" enquired Mrs. Lathrop.
"Well, I d'n know," came the answer more than a little dubiously. Then: "Seeing that I am always frank and open with you, Mrs. Lathrop, I may as well say plainly as I ain't. Very far from it. I never knew when I went to live with Lucy as Judge Fitch has got a dog as barks. He ain't no ordinary dog—he's a most uncommon dog. He only barks when it's moonlight, or when he hears something, and I must say he's got the sharpest ears I ever see. But it isn't his barking that's so bad, as it is that whenever he barks, Lucy gets right up to see whether it's Hiram come back. It seems the reason Lucy took me to board is she hates to go around the house alone nights with the dog and a candle. That's a pretty thing for me to never mistrust till I got there with my trunk. I must say I don't blame Lucy for notliking to go around alone, for the dog smells your heels all the time, and if he was in the Klondike with Hiram his nose couldn't be colder. But all the same I think she ought to of told me. For whatever it may be to others, a cold nose is certainly most new to my heels. Well, Mrs. Lathrop, we was out hunting with our dog three times last night, and Lucy says often enough he gets her up nine and ten times. Lucy's so nervous for fear Hiram'll come back that she can't possibly sleep if she thinks there's a chance of it. She says if Hiram's come back, she wants to know it right off. She says that's her nature. If she's got to have a tooth out, she wants it out at once. She says she never was one to shrink from nothing. And the dog's prompt, too. He's quite of the same mind as Lucy. He gives one bark, and then he don't dilly-dally none. He gets right up, and by the time he's got to Lucy, Lucy's got up too, and they both come racing up-stairs for me to join 'em. My door don't lock, so the dog's licking my face before I knowwhere I am. And then, before I know much more where I am, we're all three capering down-stairs together again. Then we take the whole house carefully around and listen at every door and window, with the dog smelling while we listen. Then, when we know for sure as it ain't Hiram, the dog scrambles back into his basket, and Lucy tucks him up, and she and I go back to bed alone and untucked. That's a pretty kettle of fish. And you can believe me or not, just as you please, Mrs. Lathrop, but I never had no notion of having my heels smelled by a cold dog's nose three times, and maybe nine, a night when I went to live at Judge Fitch's, and if it keeps on, I shall just leave. Lucy's got no lease on me, and although I'm sorry for her, I ain't anywhere near sorry enough for her to be woke up to pussy-cornering all over the premises with a dog the livelong night through. As between having Gran'ma Mullins sitting on my feet wailing over Hiram, and Lucy's dog smelling of my heels while we hunt for Hiram, I think I'd ratherhave Gran'ma Mullins. I was warm and comfortable and laid out flat at Gran'ma Mullins, but I'm goodness knows what at Lucy's. And I do hate having my face licked. I don't like it. I never was used to such things, and I can't begin now."
"What will—?" asked Mrs. Lathrop.
"I shall look up another nice place to live," said Miss Clegg, "and I shall take a leaf out of the dog's book and be prompt about it, too. I've spoke for the wheelbarrow to-morrow at ten o'clock, and I shall move then, whether or no."
Susan, again on the lookout for a new abiding place, discovered a most attractive proposition in Mrs. Allen. Mrs. Allen and her husband lived alone, were neat and well-fed, and kept no dog.
"I'll never go where there's a dog again, I know that," said Susan. "Why, Mrs. Lathrop, if I was in a blizzard in Switzerland and fifty of those little beer-keg dogs they've got there came scurrying up to rescue me, I wouldn't get up and let 'em havethe joy of seeing me obliged. I won't ever get up for no dog again in my life, I know that. And I know it for keeps. And there's a bolt on my side of my door at Mrs. Allen's. I've looked to that, too; and no one is to wake me nights; I've looked to that. I told Mrs. Allen all the story of what I'd suffered, and she said she'd see as I had peace in her house. She told me that I'd suffered because I needed to suffer, but now I was to have peace, and I'd have it with her. I didn't bother to ask what she meant, for I guess if she's got any secret thorn, I'll find it out quick enough, anyhow. And if it's anything that wakes me up nights, my present feeling is as I won't be well able to bear it. Well, the wheelbarrow is set for ten o'clock, and so I must go, and when I see you, I'll know what's wrong with Mrs. Allen, and the Lord help me if it's something as makes me have to move again. That's all I can say."
Susan did not visit her old friend directly after her third change of residence. Twowhole days passed by, and Mrs. Lathrop was openly troubled.
"Don't you worry," said Gran'ma Mullins soothingly. "There's nothing the matter with her, because I see her in the square this very morning. But she looked at me odd and went down a side street. I'm sure I hope Susan's not losing her mind."
"Oh, wouldn't that be awful!" exclaimed Mrs. Macy with real sympathy. "We'd have to appoint a commission to catch her and sit on her, and then if she was put in the insane asylum, I guess Susan Clegg would be mad."
"Oh, Susan wouldn't like that a bit," said Gran'ma Mullins meditatively. "They make little cups and saucers out of beads. I know, because Hiram had one once. And they read books with the letters all punched out at you."
"You're thinking of the Home for the Blind," corrected Mrs. Macy. "I was there once, too. I don't think Susan would mind going there so much, because of course shecan see, which would give her a great advantage over the others, and Susan does like to have an advantage over anybody else. But I don't believe she'd like going to the Insane Asylum much. The Insane Asylum's so limited. My husband's sister went to the Insane Asylum once, but it didn't help her none, so she came home. It wouldn't ever suit Susan."
"Well, maybe not," said Gran'ma Mullins amicably. "And I don't think she could go there, anyway, for she isn't crazy, and she's got her own money. So why should she be a charge on the county?"
The very next day Susan came wearily in to see her old friend.
"Well, I d'n know what I've ever done to have this kind of a summer," she began, seating herself sadly. "Why didn't I stay in my own house and just simply take you to board while they laid violent hands on your house? I was against being built over all along, Mrs. Lathrop, you know that. And now the fox has his cheese and the cow hasher corn, just as the Scripture says, but Susan Clegg's absolutely forced to live with Mrs. Allen. Oh, Mrs. Lathrop, you don't know what living with Mrs. Allen is, and you can't imagine, either. I never dreamed of such a thing before I went there. I was a little afraid she'd want to read me her poetry, but her poetry would have been paradise to what is. Seems as if Mrs. Allen has got a new kind of religion, and heaven help the present run of mankind if any more new religions is sprung on us, and heaven help me if I've got to live long with Mrs. Allen's new one. Mrs. Allen's new religion is most peculiar. I never see nothing like it. It's Persian, and it's very singular just to look at. But it's most awful to live with. Lucy and her dog is simple beside it, and as to Gran'ma Mullins, she's nothing but a baby dabbing a ball in comparison. According to Mrs. Allen's new religion, you mustn't find fault with nothing or nobody—never. Everything's all right, no matter how wrong it is; and if you lose your purse, you wasmeant to lose it, so why complain? You was give your purse for just a little while, and in place of wildly running here and there trying to find it, you must just thank heaven for kindly letting you have it so long, and think no more about it. If you're meant to see any more of that purse, it'll kindly look you up itself. But it's no manner of use your looking for it, because if heaven takes back a purse deliberately, never intending to return it, it never does return it, and that's all there is to be said on the subject. Well, Mrs. Lathrop, you think perhaps you can see what it would be to live with any one that feels to see life in that way; but you don't really know what you think a good deal of the time, and never less than now. Mrs. Allen's things is mostly back in heaven's hands again, and her biscuits is mostly burnt, and not one bit does she care, seeing as she don't consider as she has the least thing to do with any of it. She's happy and singing and forgetting from dawn to dark. She says the day'll soon be that the wholeearth will see the truth and be singing with her. She says the toiling millions will cease to toil then, and life'll be all Adams and Eves and no manner of misery. In the meantime, I don't get nothing to eat, and when I feel to holler down-stairs, she says dinner was meant to be late that day, or it couldn't possibly have been late. Not by no manner of means."
"Well, I—" commented Mrs. Lathrop blankly.
"Just my way of seeing it," said Susan, "and she aggravates me still more with pointing her moral, from dawn to dark. She says it's beautiful to see how beautiful life comes along. You and me needed quiet, and we got quiet. And now we need our houses built over, and we're getting 'em built over. I told her I didn't need my house built over atall, and she said as I just thought so, but that I really did, or it wouldn't be being done. Well, Mrs. Lathrop, I d'n know, I'm sure, what I will run up against next. But I don't believe I canstay at Mrs. Allen's. I really don't. There's one thing—it'll be mighty easy to leave her, for I shan't have to say nothing. I shall say I was meant to leave and then and there leave. It's a poor religion as don't fit others as easy as its own selves; and I ain't washed in the Allens' dirty rain water full of dead and drowned bugs for two days because I was meant to wash and they was meant to drown, without learning how to turn even a drowned bug to my advantage. No, sir, I'm going out this afternoon and see what I can get, and if I can't do no better, I'll buy a bolt for my door and come back to Gran'ma Mullins. Gran'ma Mullins has her good points. I always said that, Mrs. Lathrop, Gran'ma Mullins certainly has her good points. And I must learn to bear Hiram if I must. There's one thing certain: I can hear about Hiram in bed, and I don't have to get up and out of bed to hunt for him. And whatever else Gran'ma Mullins does, she don't burn her bread and blame it on the Almighty. Mrs. Allen's got the Bible so patthat you don't need to do nothing, according to her—nothing atall, but just sit still and let the world turn you around with its turning. She says Solomon said the little lilies didn't spin, and so why should she? Well, if we're to quit doing everything that lilies don't have a hand in, I must say we'll soon be in a pretty state. I never was one to admire Solomon like some people, and as for David, I think he was a fool—dancing around the ark like he'd just got it for Christmas!"
Susan searched long and wearily for a fourth abiding place that afternoon, but in the end she had to speak for the wheelbarrow for the next morning and move back to Gran'ma Mullins's.
And Gran'ma Mullins was very glad to see her back.
"Your bed's all made up with the same sheets for you, Susan," she said cordially, "and I ain't even swept so as to spoil the homelike look. You'll see your own last burnt matches and all, just as you left 'em."
"I've bought a bolt for my door," said Susan, "and I'll beg to borrow a screwdriver and something sharp to put it on with."
"I'll get 'em," agreed Gran'ma Mullins happily, "and I won't wake you no more nights, Susan. I suppose it's only natural that you, never having been married, can't possibly know the feelings of a mother. But I meant it kindly, Susan. When Lucy speaks of Hiram, she means it unkindly. But when I speak of Hiram, I always mean it kindly."
"Yes, I know," said Susan, "and if I believed like Mrs. Allen does, I'd know I was meant to listen and wouldn't mind. But I don't take no stock in that religion of Mrs. Allen's, and I won't be woke up. And although I don't want to hurt your feelings, I do want that understood right from the beginning."
"I'll remember," said Gran'ma Mullins submissively. "And now I'll fetch the screwdriver."
That evening the four friends satpleasantly once again on Mrs. Macy's piazza.
"Mrs. Lathrop had a letter from Jathrop to-day. Did you know that, Susan?" asked Mrs. Macy.
"No, I didn't," returned Susan Clegg. "What did he say?"
"He's going sailing to the West Indies in his new boat," Mrs. Macy informed her. "He's going for his health, and he's going to take three other millionaires and their own doctor."
Susan appeared unimpressed.
"He sent his mother a book about the place where he's going," said Mrs. Macy. "Do you want to see it?" She went in and brought it out.
Susan took the volume and viewed the title with an indifferent eye.
"Stark's Guide to the Bahamas," she read aloud. "What are they—something to eat?"
"You're thinking of bananas," suggested Mrs. Macy. "It's islands. It's where Columbus hit first. Nobody knows just wherehe hit, but he hit there; everybody knows that."
Susan placed the book under her arm. "I'll read it," she said briefly. "But I must say as to my order of thinking Jathrop's setting off just now is very much like a hen getting up from her eggs. Here's you and me—" addressing Mrs. Lathrop directly—"with our houses done away with, and him as has engineered the wreck skipping away with a parcel of men."
"He isn't skipping," interposed Mrs. Macy. "He's sailing—sailing in his own private boat, like the tea-man with the cup."
"Oh, I don't care what he's doing," said Susan, rising. "I'm about beat out, and I'm going home and going to bed. Such a week! The Bible says 'Whom the Lord loveth He chaseth,' and heaven knows I've been chased this week till my legs is about wore off. Such a week! I've had all the chasing I want for one while. And I never was great on being loved, so I'm going home and going to bed."
Whereupon, with theGuide to the Bahamasunder her arm and a heavy fold between her brows, Susan Clegg stalked over to her temporary domicile.
"I don't think Susan's very well," said Gran'ma Mullins.
"Maybe she's worried over Jathrop," suggested Mrs. Macy.
Mrs. Lathrop said nothing. She just rocked.
"I d'n know, I'm sure, what star this town could ever have been laid out under," said Susan Clegg, one exceptionally hot night as the four friends sat out on Mrs. Macy's steps, "but my own opinion is as it must have been a comet, for we're always skiting along into some sort of hot water. When it ain't all of us, it's some of us, and when it ain't some of us, it's one of us, and now the walls of my house is up I'd be willing to bet a nickel as a calamity'll happen along just because something's always happening here and my walls is the youngest and tenderest thing in the community now."
"Your roof ain't—" began Mrs. Lathrop.
"Of course not; how could it be, when my walls is only just up? I don't wish to be casting no stones at him as is the least among us, but I will say, Mrs. Lathrop, as Jathrop's orders seem to be taking you up under the loving protection of their wings, while I'm running around like I was a viper without no warm bosom to hatch me.Yourwalls have been up and a-doing for a week, but my walls have been sitting around waiting until I was nigh to put out. To see your laths going in and your plaster going on, while I stay lumber and nails, is a lesson in yielding to the will of heaven as I never calculated on. There's few things more aggravating than to see some other house speeding along while your own house sits silently, patiently waiting. Of course I can't say nothing, as even the boy as carries water knows my house is going to be a present to me in the end. It's all right, and likely enough the Lord has seen fit to send this summer to me as a chastisement; but I will say that if I'd known how this summerwas going, the Lord would most certainly have had to plan some other way to punish me. I don't say as it wasn't natural that your walls should go up first, Jathrop being your son, and, now that he's rich, no more to me than a benefactor—"
"Oh, Susan!" expostulated Mrs. Macy.
"That's what he is, Mrs. Macy; he's my benefactor, and I can't escape if I want to. You may tend a man's mother ten years, day and night, house cleanings and cistern cleanings, moths and the well froze up, and if the man comes back rich, he's your benefactor."
"Susan!" cried Mrs. Lathrop, "you—"
"Don't deny it, Mrs. Lathrop; it's the truth. It's one of those truths that the wiser they are, the sadder you get. It's one of those truths as is the whole truth and a little left over; and I'm learning that I'm to be what's left over, more every day. After a life of being independent and living on my own money, I'm now going down on my knees learning the lesson of being humbly grateful for what I don't want. I maysound bitter, but if I do it isn't surprising, for I feel bitter; and Gran'ma Mullins knows I'm always frank and open, so she'll excuse my saying that there's nothing in living withheras tends to calm me much. A woman as sleeps in a bed as Hiram must have played leap-frog over all his life from the feel of the springs, and pours out of a pitcher as has got a chip out of its nose, ain't in no mood to mince nothing. I never was one to mince, and I never will be—not now and not never. Mincing is for them as ain't got it in them to speak their minds freely; and my mind is a thing that's made to be free and not a slave."
"Well, really, Susan," expostulated Mrs. Macy, "what ever—"
"Don't interrupt me, Mrs. Macy. I'm full of goodness knows what, but whatever it is, I'm too full of it for comfort. There's nothing in the life I'm leading this summer to make me expect comfort, and very little to make me feel full, but there's things as would make a man dying of starvation bustif he experienced them. And I'm full of such things. I never had no idea of being out of my house all summer, and now, when my walls is up at last, and it looks like maybe I'd get back a home feeling some day soon, I must up and get quite another kind of feeling—a feeling that something is going to happen. It's a very strange feeling, and at first I thought it was just some more of Gran'ma Mullins' cooking; but it kept getting stronger, and when I was in the square, I spoke to Mr. Kimball about it; and he says this is cyclone weather, and maybe a cyclone is going to happen. He says a man was in town yesterday wanting to insure everybody against fire and cyclones. Most everybody did it. Mr. Kimball says after the young man got through, you pretty much had to do it. Them as had policies with the company could get the word 'cyclone' writ in for a dollar. I guess the young man did a very good day's work. Mr. Kimball says if it's true as there's any cyclones coming nosing about here, he wants his dried-apple machineinsured anyhow. It's a fine machine, and every kind of fruit as is left over each night comes out jam next day, while all the vegetables make breakfast food. He says it's a wonder."
"What makes him think we're going to have a cyclone?" inquired Mrs. Macy anxiously.
"He says the weather is cyclony. And he says if I feel queer that's a sign, for I'm a sensitive nature."
"I never—" said Mrs. Lathrop.
"No, nor me, neither. But Mr. Kimball seemed to feel there wasn't no doubt. He says I'm just the kind of sensitive nature as could feel a cyclone. Why, he says cyclones take the roofs off the houses!"
"Ow!" cried Gran'ma Mullins in surprise.
"If one's coming, I'm glad to know, for I never see one near to," said Mrs. Macy pensively.
"You won't see it atall," said Susan, "for Mr. Kimball says the only safe place in a cyclone is the cellar; and to pull a kitchentable over you to keep the house from squashing you flat when it caves in."
"My heavens alive!" cried Mrs. Lathrop.
"That's what he said. But he says not to worry, for the young man told him as they're getting so common no one notices them any more. He says they're always going hop, skip, and jump over Kansas and everywhere, and no one pays no attention to 'em. He knows all about it. But he wanted it clear as he was only insuring forcyclones; he says his firm wouldn't have nothing to do with tornadoes. You can get as much on a cyclone as on a fire, but you can't get a penny on a tornado—"
"What's the diff—" asked Gran'ma Mullins.
"That's the trouble; nobody can just tell. A cyclone is wind and lightning mixed by combustion and drove forward by expulsion, the young man told Mr. Kimball. He said they'd got cyclones all worked out, and they can average 'em up same as everything else, but he says a tornado is something as no mancan get hold of, and no man will ever be able to study. Tornadoes drive nails through fences—"
"Where do they get the nails?" asked Gran'ma Mullins.
"I d'n know. Pick 'em out of the fences first, I guess. And they strip the feathers off chickens and scoop up haystacks and carry them up in the air for good and all."
"Oh, my!" cried Mrs. Macy.
"Mr. Kimball said the young man told him that a tornado dug up a complete marsh once in Minnesota and spread it out upside down on top of a wood a little ways off; and when there's a tornado anywhere near, the sewing-machines all tick like they was telegraphing."
"No!" cried Mrs. Macy.
"Yes, the young man said so."
"But do you believe him?"
"I don't know why not. I wouldn't believe Mr. Kimball because he's always fixing up his stories to sound better than they really are, which makes me have very littlefaith in him; but Judge Fitch says he'd make a splendid witness for any one just on that very account. Judge Fitch says with a little well-advised help Mr. Kimball would carry convictions to any man,—he don't except none,—but I see no reason why the young man wasn't telling the truth. Young men do tell the truth sometimes; most everybody does that. A tornado catches up pigs and carries 'em miles and pulls up trees by the roots. I don't wonder they won't insure 'em."
"The pigs?" asked Mrs. Macy.
"No, the tornadoes."
"What's the signs of a tornado?" asked Gran'ma Mullins uneasily.
"Well, the signs is alike for both. The signs is weather like to-day and a kind of breathlessness like to-night. Mr. Kimball says a funnel-shaped cloud is a great sign; and when you see it, in three minutes it's on you, and off goes your roof if it's a cyclone, and off you go yourself if it's a tornado."
"My heavens alive!" cried Mrs. Lathrop,clutching the arms of her old-gold-plush stationary rocker.
"Do people ever come down again?" Gran'ma Mullins inquired; she was very pale.
"Elijah didn't, Mr. Kimball says."
"Elijah Doxey?" cried Mrs. Macy. "Why, is he off on a cyclone? No one ever told me."
"No, Elijah in the Bible, you know. The Elijah as was caught up in a chariot of fire. Mr. Kimball says there ain't a mite of doubt in his mind but that it was a tornado. I guess Mr. Kimball told the truth that time, for it's all in the Bible."
"That's true," said Gran'ma Mullins. "I remember Elijah myself. He kept a tame raven, seems to me, or some such thing."
"Oh, Susan!" Mrs. Lathrop cried out suddenly. "There's a fun—" Her voice failed her; she raised her hand and pointed.
Susan turned quickly, and her face became suddenly gray-white. "It can't be a cy—" she faltered.
With that all four women jumped different ways at once.
"Where shall we go?" shrieked Mrs. Macy. "Oh, saints and sinners preserve us! Oh, Susan, where shall we go?"
But Susan Clegg stood as if paralyzed, staring straight at the funnel-shaped cloud.
Gran'ma Mullins started for her own house; Mrs. Lathrop sprang up and clasped the piazza post nearest; Mrs. Macy grabbed her skirts up at both sides and faced the cyclone just as she had once faced the cow.
The funnel-shaped cloud came sweeping towards them. The town was between, and a darkness and a mighty roar arose. Buildings seemed falling; the din was terrible.
"I knew it," said Susan grimly. "Itisa cyclone!" She faced the worst—standing erect.
The next instant the storm was on them all. It lifted Mrs. Lathrop's old-gold-plush stationary rocker and hurled it at that goodlady, smashing her hard against the post. It raised the roof of Mrs. Macy's house and dropped it like an extinguisher over the fleeing form of Gran'ma Mullins.
"Oh, Gran'ma Mullins, itisa cyclone!" Susan shrieked. But Gran'ma Mullins answered not.
A second mighty burst of fury blew down two trees, and it blew Susan herself back against the side wall of the house which shook and swayed like a bit of cardboard.
"Oh, yes, it's a cyclone," Susan screamed over and over. "Oh, Mrs. Lathrop, it's a real cyclone! It isn't a tornado; you can see the difference now. It's a cyclone; look at the roof; it's a cyclone!"
Mrs. Lathrop could see nothing. She and the old-gold-plush stationary rocker were all piled together under the piazza post.
And now came the third and worst burst of fury. It crashed on the blacksmith's shop; it carried the sails of the windmill swooping down the road, and then "without halting, without rest" lifted Mrs. Macy withher outspread skirts and carried her straight up in the air. "Oh! Oh!" she shrieked and sailed forth.
Susan gave a piercing yell. "Oh, Mrs. Macy, it's a tornado, it's a tornado!" But Mrs. Macy answered not.
Tipping, swaying, ducking to the right or left, she flew majestically away over her own roof first and then over that of Gran'ma Mullins' woodshed.
"Help! Help!" cried Gran'ma Mullins from under the roof.
Mrs. Lathrop was oblivious to all, smashed by her own old-gold-plush stationary rocker.
Susan Clegg stood as one fascinated, staring after the trail which was all that was left of Mrs. Macy.
"It was a tornado!" she said over and over. "Mrs. Macy'll always believe in the Bible now, I guess. It was a tornado! Itwasa tornado!"
"No, they ain't found her yet," Susan said, coming into the hotel room where Mrs.Lathrop and Gran'ma Mullins had found a pleasant and comfortable refuge and were occupied in recuperating together at Jathrop's expense. Neither lady was seriously injured. Gran'ma Mullins had been preserved from even a wetting through the neat capping of her climax by Mrs. Macy's roof; while Mrs. Lathrop's squeeze between the piazza post and her well beloved old-gold-plush stationary rocker had not—as Gran'ma Mullins put it—so much as turned a hair of even the rocker.
"No one's heard anything from her yet," continued Susan, "but that ain't so surprising as it would be if anybody had time to want to know. But nobody's got time for nothing to-day. The town's in a awful taking, and I d'n know as I ever see a worse situation. You two want to be very grateful as you're so nicely and neatly laid aside, for what has descended on the community now is worse'n any cyclone, and if you could get out and see what the cyclone's done, you'd know whatthatmeans."
"Was you to my house, Susan?" asked Gran'ma Mullins anxiously.
"I was; but the insurance men was before me, or anyhow, we met there."
"The insurance men!"
"That's what I said,—the insurance men. Oh, Mrs. Lathrop, we all know one side of what it is to insure ourselves, but now the Lord in his infinite wrath has mercifully seen fit to show us the other side. The Assyrian pouncing down on the wolf in his fold is a young mother wrapping up her first baby to look out the window compared to those insurance men. They descended on us bright and shining to-day, and if we was murderers with our families buried under the kitchen floor, we couldn't be looked on with more suspicion. I was far from pleased when I first laid eyes on 'em, for there's a foxiness in any city man as comes to settle things in the country as is far from being either soothing or syrupy to him as lives in the country; but you can maybe imagine my feelings when they very plainlyinformed me as I couldn't put the roof back on Mrs. Macy's house till it was settled whether it was a cyclone or a tornado—"
"Settled—whether—" cried Mrs. Lathrop.
"Cyclone or tornado," repeated Susan. "The first thing isn't to get to rights, but it is to settle whether we've got any rights to get. I never dreamed what it was to be injured—no, or no one else neither. Seems if it's a tornado, we don't get a cent of our insurance. And to think it all depends on Mrs. Macy."
"On Mrs.—" cried Gran'ma Mullins.
"Yes, because she's the only one as really knows whether she was carried off or not. Well, all I can say is, if she don't come back pretty quick, we're going to have a little John Brown raid right here in town; we—"
"But what—?"
"I'm telling you. It'll be the town rising up against the insurance men, and the insurance men will soon find that when itcomes to dilly-dallying with folks newly cycloned upside down, it's life and death if you don't deal fair. What with chimneys down and roofs turned up at the corner like the inquiring angels didn't have time to take the cover all off but just pried up a little to see what was inside,—I say with all this and everything wet and Mrs. Macy gone, this community was in no mood to be sealed up—"
"Sealed up!" cried Mrs. Lathrop and Gran'ma Mullins together.
"That's what it is. Sealed up we are, and sealed up we've got to stay until Mrs. Macy gets back—"
"But—" cried Gran'ma Mullins.
"Everybody's just as mad as you are. Charging bulls is setting hens beside this town to-night. Even Mr. Kimball's mad for once in his life; he's losing money most awful, for he can't sell so much as a paper of tacks. They've got both his doors and all his windows sealed, and he's standing out in front with nothing to do except to keep a sharp eyeout for Mrs. Macy. He says it ain't in reason to expect as she'll fly back, but she's got to come from somewhere, and he means to prevent her getting away again on the sly. He says his opinion is as she'd have stood a better chance before airships was so common. He says ten years ago folks would have took steps for hooking at her just as quick as they saw her coming along, but nowadays it'd be a pretty brave man as would try to stop anything he saw flying overhead. I guess he's about right there. It's a hard question to know what to do with things that fly, even if Mrs. Macy hadn't took to it, too. My view is that we advance faster than we can learn how to manage our new inventions. I d'n know, I'm sure, though, what Mrs. Macy is going to do about this trip of hers. She went without even the moment's notice as folks in a hurry always has had up to now. She's been gone most twenty-four hours. She's skipped three meals already, not to speak of her night and her nap; and you know as well as I dohow Mrs. Macy was give to her nights and her napping."
Susan shook her head, and Mrs. Lathrop looked wide-eyed and alarmed.
"But now—" Gran'ma Mullins asked.
"I've been all over the place," Susan continued. "I didn't understand fully what was up when I scurried off to try and get those men to put the roof back on Mrs. Macy's house, but I know it all now. It's no use trying to get anybody to do nothing now; the whole town's upside down and inside out. I never see nothing like it. And the insurance men has got it laid down flat as nobody can't touch nothing till it's settled whether it's a cyclone or a tornado. Seems a good many was insured for cyclones right in with their fires without knowing it; but there ain't a soul in the place insured against a tornado, because you can't get any insurance against tornadoes—no one will insure them. The insurance men say if it's a tornado, we won't have nothing to do except to do the best we can; but if it's a cyclone, wemus'n't touch anything till they can get some one to judge what's worth saving and how much it's worth and deduct that from our insurance. That's how it is."
"But what has—?" began Gran'ma Mullins.
"How long—?" demanded Mrs. Lathrop.
"Nobody knows," said Susan. "The whole town is asking, and nobody knows. The insurance company won't let anybody go home or get anything unless they'll sign a paper giving up their insurance and swearing that it was a tornado. Mr. Dill just had to sign the paper because he was taking a bath and had nothing except the table cover to wear. He signed the paper and said he'd swear anything if only for his shoes alone; and it seems that his house isn't hurt a mite, and he didn't have no insurance anyhow. A good many is blaming him, but he says he really couldn't think of anything in the excitement and the table cloth. It's a awful state of things. The cyclone has tore everything to pieces, and the insurancemen has put their seal on the chips. People is being drove to all lengths. The minister and his family is camping in the henhouse. Our walls is fell in so goodness knows what will happen to you and me next, Mrs. Lathrop. The wires is all down, so we can't hear nothing about the storm. The rails is all up, so there's no trains. The church is stove in, so we can't pray. But I must say as to my order of thinking, it looks as if no one feels like praying. The insurance men is running all over, like winged ants hatching out, sealing up more doors and more windows every minute and getting more signatures as it was a tornado before they'll unstick them. Nothing can't be really settled till Mrs. Macy comes back. Mrs. Macy is the key to the whole situation."
"But why—?" asked Mrs. Lathrop.
"The Jilkins is in from Cherry Pond, and all it did there was to rain. The Sperrits was in, too, and the storm was most singular with them. It hailed in the sunshine tillthey see four rainbows—they never see the beat. Mr. Weskins is advising everybody to go into their houses and make a test case of it. Judge Fitch is advising everybody not to. It's plain as he's on the side of the insurance men. He says just as they do, that we'd better wait till Mrs. Macy comes back and hear her story. He says in the very nature of things her view'll be a most general one. He says all there is to know she'll know; she'll know the area affected and be able to tell whether it was electricity or just wind. Mr. Kimball said if she went far enough, she'd be a star witness; but no one thinks that jokes about Mrs. Macy ought to be told now. The situation is too serious. It may beveryserious for Mrs. Macy. If the storm stopped sudden, it may be very serious indeed for Mrs. Macy. Mrs. Macy isn't as young as she was, and she hadn't the least idea of leaving town; she wasn't a bit prepared, that we can all swear to. She was just carried away by a sudden impulse—as you might say—and the main question is howfar did she get on her impulse, and where is she now? To my order of thinking, it all depends on how she come down. Cycloning along like she was, if she come down on a pond or a peak, she'll be far from finding it funny. I was thinking about her all the way here, and I can't think of any way as'll be easy for her to come to earth, no matter how she comes. And if she hits hard, she isn't going to like it. Mrs. Macy was never one as took a joke pleasant; she never made light of nothing. She took life very solemn-like—a owl was a laughing hyena compared to Mrs. Macy. It's too bad she was that way. My own view is as she never got over not getting married again. Some women don't. She always took it as a reflection. There's no reflection to not getting married; my opinion is as there's a deal of things more important and most thing's more comfortable. If Mrs. Macy was married, she'd be much worse off than she is right now, for instead of being able to give her whole time and attention to whatever she's doing and looking over, she'dbe wondering what he was giving his time and attention to doing and prying into. When a man's out of your sight, you've always got to wonder, and most of the time that's all in the world you can do about a man. Now Mrs. Macy's perfectly independent, she can go where she pleases and come down when she pleases, and she hasn't got to tell what she saw unless she wants to. Mrs. Brown says she ain't never been nowhere. It's plain to be seen as Mrs. Brown's envying Mrs. Macy her trip."