"Settled—whether—" cried Mrs. Lathrop.
"Cyclone or tornado," repeated Susan. "The first thing isn't to get to rights, but it is to settle whether we've got any rights to get. I never dreamed what it was to be injured—no, or no one else neither. Seems if it's a tornado, we don't get a cent of our insurance. And to think it all depends on Mrs. Macy."
"On Mrs.—" cried Gran'ma Mullins.
"Yes, because she's the only one as really knows whether she was carried off or not. Well, all I can say is, if she don't come back pretty quick, we're going to have a little John Brown raid right here in town; we—"
"But what—?"
"I'm telling you. It'll be the town rising up against the insurance men, and the insurance men will soon find that when it comes to dilly-dallying with folks newly cycloned upside down, it's life and death if you don't deal fair. What with chimneys down and roofs turned up at the corner like the inquiring angels didn't have time to take the cover all off but just pried up a little to see what was inside,—I say with all this and everything wet and Mrs. Macy gone, this community was in no mood to be sealed up—"
"Sealed up!" cried Mrs. Lathrop and Gran'ma Mullins together.
"That's what it is. Sealed up we are, and sealed up we've got to stay until Mrs. Macy gets back—"
"But—" cried Gran'ma Mullins.
"Everybody's just as mad as you are. Charging bulls is setting hens beside this town to-night. Even Mr. Kimball's mad for once in his life; he's losing money most awful, for he can't sell so much as a paper of tacks. They've got both his doors and all his windows sealed, and he's standing out in front with nothing to do except to keep a sharp eye out for Mrs. Macy. He says it ain't in reason to expect as she'll fly back, but she's got to come from somewhere, and he means to prevent her getting away again on the sly. He says his opinion is as she'd have stood a better chance before airships was so common. He says ten years ago folks would have took steps for hooking at her just as quick as they saw her coming along, but nowadays it'd be a pretty brave man as would try to stop anything he saw flying overhead. I guess he's about right there. It's a hard question to know what to do with things that fly, even if Mrs. Macy hadn't took to it, too. My view is that we advance faster than we can learn how to manage our new inventions. I d'n know, I'm sure, though, what Mrs. Macy is going to do about this trip of hers. She went without even the moment's notice as folks in a hurry always has had up to now. She's been gone most twenty-four hours. She's skipped three meals already, not to speak of her night and her nap; and you know as well as I do how Mrs. Macy was give to her nights and her napping."