Part 7

"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 whenever I'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, and Herod 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 when she 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 into the 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 built over 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."

VII

SUSAN CLEGG UNSETTLED

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 nothing could 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 for recollecting 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 teaches you 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 is going 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 as a 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 not liking 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 know where 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 rather have 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 have the 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. Two whole 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 she can 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 has her 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 was meant 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 whole earth 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 a _tall_, 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 can stay 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 pat that you don't need to do nothing, according to her--nothing a _tall_, 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."