"No, but he thinks he's tore himself."
Miss Clegg began to walk rapidly towards her own house.
"You can see I've got to go," she called back to her friend over her shoulder; "this is what it is to have a man livin' in your house, Mrs. Lathrop."
CHAPTER XVI
THE BEGINNING OF THE END
As June wore on it became more and more apparent that Elijah wore on Miss Clegg. She grew less and less mild towards his shortcomings and more and more severe as to the same.
"He's only—" Mrs. Lathrop attempted to explain to her.
"I don't care if he is," she replied, "it says in the Bible as a man is a man for all that an' I never was one to go against the Bible even if I ain't never felt in conscience called to say where Cain an' Abel got married, or what it was as the Jews lit out from Egypt on a'count of. I tell you what it is, Mrs. Lathrop, you've forgotten what it is to have a man around your house. There's somethin' just about the way a man eats an' sleeps as gets very aggravatin' to any woman after the new's off. I begin to see what men invented gettin' married for,—it was so they could kite around an' always be sure they had one woman safe chained up at home to do their cookin' an' washin'. Why, I ain't married to Elijah a tall, an' yet just havin' him in the house is gettin' me more an' more under his thumb every day that he stays with me. I feel to stay in the square an' I find myself hurryin' home 'cause he likes hot biscuits, an' I feel to turn his washstand around an' I leave it where it is for no better reason than as he likes it where it is. It's awful the way a man gets the upper hand of a woman! Lord knows I've no love for Elijah an' yet I'm caperin' upstairs an' downstairs when he ain't in a hurry an' tearin' my legs off scamperin' when he is, until I declare I feel mad at myself—I certainly do.
"An' now, there he is fallin' in love with 'Liza Em'ly, the last girl in the world as he'd ought to even dream of marryin', an' I talk to him an' talk to him, an' tell him so, an' tell him so, an' it don't make no more impression than when you rub a cat behind her ear."