"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.