"I've been all through it," she said to her friend, "and now I can't really tell what I think a tall. But this I do know, if we ever really get these houses, I will be running back and forth from dawn to dark through that wire tunnel in a way as'll make the liveliest polar bear that ever kept taking a fresh turn look like a petrified tree beside me. Why, only to keep the conveniences he's got put in scoured bright would take me all of every morning in my house, to say nothing of wiping up the floors, for Jathrop isn't intending to buy us no carpets ever. We're to sit around on cherry when we ain't on Georgia pine, and he's got every mantelpiece marked with the kind of wood we're to burn in it, and he's been kind enough to tell us what colored china we're to use in each bedroom. We're to shoot our clothes into the cellar through a hole from up-stairs and wash 'em there in those two square boxes as we couldn't make out. That thing I read 'angle-hook' is a 'inglenook,' and so far from sitting in it to fish we're to set in it to look at the fire, if we can get any mahogany to burn in that particular fireplace.
"Those fans are stairs, we're to go up 'em the way the arrow points, and heaven knows where or how we're to get down again. What we thought was beds is closets, and what we thought was closets is beds, and it's evident with all his hopping and hanging he didn't really charge his mind with us a tall, for he's got a bedroom in your house marked 'Mr. Lathrop,' when the last bit of real thought would have made him just have to remember as you're a widow. He's give me a sewing-room when he must have seen that I always do my mending in the kitchen, and he's give us each enough places to wash to keep the whole community clean. I must say he's tried to be fair, for he's give both houses the same number of rooms and the same names to each room. We've each got a summer kitchen, but he left the spring and autumn to scratch along anyhow; we've each got a bathtub, and we've each got a china-closet as well as a pantry, which shows he had very little observation of the way you keep things in order."
Mrs. Lathrop absorbed all this with the happy calm of a contented (and rocking) sponge.
"But what takes me is the way he's not only got a finger, but has just smashed both hands, into every pie on the place," Susan continued. "He's moved the chicken-house and give us each a horse and give the cow a calf without even so much as 'by your leave.' I don't know which will be the most surprised if this plan comes true—me with my horse, or the cow finding herself with a calf in the fall as well as the spring this year. Then it beats me where he's going to get all his trees, for both houses is a blooming bower, and the way tree-toads will sing me to sleep shows he's had no close friends in the country. Trees brushing your window mean mosquitos at night and spiders whenever they feel so disposed. And that ain't all, whatever you may think, for you haven't got a window-pane over four inches square and, as every window has fifty-six of them, I see your windows going dirty till out of very shame I get 'em washed for your funeral. And that ain't all, whatever you may think, either, for the snow is going to lodge all around all those little gables and inglenooks he's trimmed your roof with, and you'll leak before six months goes by, or I'll lose my guess."
But it was impossible to impress Mrs. Lathrop. If things leaked, Jathrop would have them mended. She just rocked and rocked.
"I don't know what to write Jathrop about these plans," Susan Clegg said slowly. "Of course, I've got to write him something, and I declare I don't know what to say. He means it kindly, and there's nothing in the wide world that makes things so hard as when people mean kindly. You can do all sorts of things when people is enemies, but when any one means anything kindly, you've got to eat it if it kills you. Mrs. Allen was telling me the other day that since she's took a vow to do one good action daily, she's lost most all of her friends.
"That just shows how people feel about being grabbed by the neck and held under till you feel you've done enough good to 'em. Jathrop means this well, but I've got a feeling as we'll go through a great deal of misery being built over, and I really don't think we'll be so much better off after we've survived. You'll have to be torn right down, and the day that that young man was up on my porch post, he said he couldn't be positive that I'd keep even my north wall. He pounded it all over in the dining-room until the paper was a sight, and then when he saw how very far from pleased I was, he tried to get out of it by saying the wall would have to come down, anyhow. I think he saw toward the last that he'd gone too far in a many little ways. I didn't like his taking the hens off their nests to measure how wide the henhouse was. I consider a hen is one woman when she's seated at work and had ought not to be called off by any man alive. But, laws, that young man wasn't any respecter of work or hens or anything else! He called himself an artist, and since I've been studying these plans, I've begun to think as he was really telling the truth, for artists is all crazy, and anything crazier than these plans I never did see. Not content with having us wash in the sink and the cellar, we're to wash under the front stairs, too, not to speak of all but swimming up-stairs."
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 speak of, 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.