"Tore it into small bits," returned Susan, rising, "and scattered them to the winds of heaven. There's a paper trail all the way from the square to Mrs. Macy's gate."
Mrs. Lathrop resumed her rocking and relapsed into silence.
Susan Clegg, laying her finger to her lips as a parting warning, went quietly out.
XI
SUSAN CLEGG AND THE PLAYWRIGHT
"Well," said Miss Clegg to her dear friend in the early fall of that same year, while they still waited under alien roofs the completion of their own made-over houses, "the men who write the Sunday papers and say that when you look at the world with a impartial eye in this century you can't but have hopes of women some day developing into something, surely would know they spoke the truth if they could see Elijah Doxey now."
"But Eli—" expostulated Mrs. Lathrop.
"No, of course not. But 'Liza Em'ly is, and it's her I'm talking about. She was up to see me this afternoon, and she says she'll spare no money nowhere. The trained nurse is to stay with him right along forever if he likes, and the two can have her automobile and ride or walk or do anything, without thinking once what it costs. There was a doctor up from the city again yesterday, and that makes four visits at a hundred a visit. But 'Liza Em'ly says even if Elijah hadn't anything of his own, she'd pay all the bills sooner'n think anything that could be done was being left out. It's a pretty sad case, Mrs. Lathrop, and this last doctor says he never see a sadder. He said nothing more could be done right now, for there really is nothing in this community to remind Elijah that he ever wrote a play, if they only could get those clippings from the newspapers away from him. But that's just what they can't do. He keeps looking them over, and then such a look of agony comes into his eyes,—and Elijah was never one to bear pain as you must know, remembering him with the colic,—and he clasps his hands and shakes his head, and—well, Mrs. Lathrop, Elijah just wasn't strong enough to write a play, and some one as was stronger ought to of restrained him right in the first of it."