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.