"Still, there's no cloud, however black, as hasn't got some silk in its lining, and the silk in this is the clock as Father gave Mother, which was supposed to be marble and wasn't. Much as I hated that clock, I couldn't have borne to see its agonies when set on by the new fireplace below, and the pink and gold wall paper behind, and the roses and cupids in the cornish above. It must just of shriveled in shame instead of going out in glorious flight, as it did when I set it flying at the end of the bed-slat. Lord knows, though, Mrs. Lathrop, that's a small thing to be thankful for; and it's the only thing. I haven't begun yet to tell you all. And I don't intend to. There's a limit to my temper, and if I once got started, there's no saying where I'd end. But there's one thing more as I can't hold in, and it's the thing as was marked on the plans: 'But. Pan.' I never did understand why I should be give a separate room to keep butter pans in, seeing as I ain't got no cow, let alone no dairy. And even if I had, why I should keep my butter pans or my milk pans either in a little alley-way between the kitchen and the dining-room, just where the heat and smells could get at 'em from one side and the flies from both, not to mention the added footsteps put on me journeying from the stove to the dinner table. You can see for yourself, Mrs. Lathrop, there's no sense in it, whatever. But I'd never say a word about it, if that was all. But it ain't all. It's the littlest part. For Jathrop's cruelty hasn't stopped with torturing the furniture. It's clear he couldn't be satisfied till he fixed up a trap as sooner or later would hit me square in the face and break my nose. At both ends of his 'But. Pan.' he's had hung doors as swing, and springs on 'em to make 'em swing hard and deadly. What either one of those swinging doors might do to my features, let alone to the pudding or stew I might be carrying, it isn't in mortal tongue to express. If I could find one thing as was right in the whole house, I'd be fair and square enough to overlook the others; but there ain't to my mind a single solitary betterment. There's glass knobs on all the doors as will show every finger mark, and will keep me busy wiping from dawn to dark. The old brown knobs never showed nothing and didn't never have to be thought of, let alone polished. It's always been my idea as a cupboard was a place to shut things up in out of sight, and here if he hasn't gone and put glass doors on the one in the corner of the dining room, so as every one can see just what's meant to be hid. It's clear to be seen he's crazy on the subject of glass, which I ain't and never have been. And I don't like the way he's stinted things as is necessary and put all the money in things as had better been left out. Necessities before everything is my motto. What use, I'd like to know, is that cupid and rose cornish? But he puts that there just to catch dust and leaves out the whole of one parlor wall. If you'll believe me, Mrs. Lathrop, there's not a hair or hide of a wall between my entry hall and my parlor. Nothing but a pair of white posts as most people use on their piazzas. How I'm ever going to keep that parlor dark I don't see; for he's got glass over the front door and on both sides of it, and no shutters to keep the sun out. He's built in both the kitchen stove and the ice box, and for the life of me, I can't find no reasonable way of taking the ashes out of the one or the water out of the other. The builder says the ashes dump into a place in the cellar and the water from the ice drains down a pipe underneath the house. But I don't like neither plan. The drip from a ice box is a very cheering sound, I think, and with hot ashes going down cellar where you can't see 'em, I'll be in deadly fear of the house going up in smoke while I'm dreaming in my bed. The long and the short of it is, Mrs. Lathrop, I feel as I have been assaulted and robbed. Jathrop's took away my home and left me a house as isn't a home to me and never can be. And as far as I can see, he's done the same to you, which is ten thousand times worse, you being his mother."
"I—" began Mrs. Lathrop, taking up the letter from her lap so that at last it was forced upon Susan's observance.
"From him, I suppose," Miss Clegg instantly concluded, reaching for it. "If he's got anything to say in his defence, I'm sure I'd delight to read it. But no matter what he says, he can't undo to me what he's done to me. I'll never feel the same towards Jathrop, your son or not your son, Mrs. Lathrop, as long as I live."
Mrs. Lathrop passed the letter to Miss Clegg. Like all of Jathrop's letters, it was brief and to the point. He announced that he would spend Christmas with his mother in her rebuilt home and would bring with him a friend as his guest. Susan read it over twice, turning the page each time, evidently in hope of finding an enlightening postscript.
"Well, of all things!" she exclaimed, as she passed the letter back to her friend. "Coming to see his work of destruction and going to bring her with him!"
"He don't—" Mrs. Lathrop endeavored to explain.
"He don't, because he don't dare; but there's no question what he means. He's bringing the señora. And he wouldn't bring her if it wasn't that he's going to marry her. Even you must see that. And if there was ever a insult multiplied by perjury, Jathrop's done it in that action. It's a good thing he didn't ask: 'How's Susan Clegg?' this time, as he did the time he was coming back from the Klondike. For I don't believe I could ever have stood that. All I can say, Mrs. Lathrop, is as I'm sorry for you from the soles of my feet up. You'll never in the world be able to get up a Christmas dinner as will please any señora, you can take my word on that. And not to please her will be a bad beginning with a señora as is to be your future daughter-in-law. Señoras don't care shucks for turkey and mince pie. They're not used to 'em and likely to get indigestion from 'em, and think what it would mean to Jathrop, let alone to her, if she should be carried off by a acute attack right here in your new, built-over house, at the dinner table. He'd blame it on you, and like as not she'd haunt you the rest of your living days. No, sir. You've got to give her Spanish omelets with lots of red peppers in 'em, and everything else Creole style, which means all he't up with tabasco sauce fit to burn out your insides. It's eating like that as makes those Spaniards and Cubans so dark colored you can't tell 'em from mulattoes. The peppers and the tabasco sauce bakes 'em brown on the outside, after leaving 'em all scorched and parched within."
For once, however, Susan Clegg was wrong in her deduction. Jathrop arrived in a red automobile on the day before Christmas, with a chauffeur in bear-skins driving, and a guest in sealskin beside him. But the guest was not the señora. It was one of Jathrop's millionaire friends who, Jathrop said, could buy and sell him twenty times over. He was a small man with a bald head and a red beard and old enough to be Jathrop's father.
Miss Clegg viewed the arrival from her bedroom window and was so glad it wasn't the señora that she at once set about baking extra doughnuts and mince pie to contribute to the festivities of the morrow. This occupied her until supper time. Then she made a hurried meal, washed her one plate and cup and saucer, and loaded down with her thank offering, flitted through the pergola and in at Mrs. Lathrop's kitchen door. The kitchen was empty, but voices penetrating from the dining room told her that her friend and her visitors were still at table. Being a trifle nervous and unable to sit quietly, she began at once to put the disordered kitchen into some degree of order, purely for the sake of occupation.
She had just finished washing and scouring the pots and pans and was flushing the waste-pipe of Mrs. Lathrop's new porcelain sink with lye-water so strong that her eyes ran tears from the fumes, when the voices growing more and more audible told her that Jathrop was leading his mother and his guest toward the kitchen. She just had time hurriedly to dry her hands on the roller towel when they appeared.