Mrs. Lathrop had been dumbfounded to see a horse and wagon being driven into her neighbor's yard a little before noon one warm spring day. Her eyesight was not good enough to identify the horse's driver, but she hung breathlessly in her kitchen window and peered gaspingly out upon his boldness and daring during the whole four minutes that it took him to hitch to a clothes-pole; and then, when the fell deed was accomplished, she watched him go in by the kitchen door, and waited, with a confidence born of a very good understanding of her neighbor's views as to driving in and hitching, to see him cast ignominiously forth by Miss Clegg.
But even that omniscience of a friend's habits which may be acquired during a next-door residence for years sometimes fails, and Mrs. Lathrop, after an hour of more or less active bobbing in the window that commanded the best view of the rear of the house on the other side of the fence, was forced to see that the caller, whoever he might be, was not cast forth, and a further hour's attention showed that he did not quit the premises either just before or just after dinner. When Mrs. Lathrop had quite settled the last point to her complete satisfaction and un-understanding, she decided to give up watching and to go to sleep as usual. She slept until four in the afternoon, and when she awoke and hurried to the window the horse and wagon were gone. Susan seemed gone too, for her house looked very shut up and sounded more than silent. So Mrs. Lathrop went back forthwith to her chair and slept again, and the next time she awakened it was her friend's voice that awakened her, as the latter stood over her and demanded briskly,
"Well, did you see him?"
"I—oh—oh—I—" began Mrs. Lathrop, vaguely.
"I thought you could n't but see him," said Susan, "hitchin' his horse to one o' my clothes-poles as large as life. If it 'd been any day in his life but this one I 'd surely of told him frank 'n' open my views on hitchin' to my clothes-poles, but bein' as it was to-day I only told him my views on drivin' over my grass."
"But—" began Mrs. Lathrop.
"The horse did n't bite the pole," continued Susan; "he said as he wa'n't no cribber. I told him it wa'n't cribs as was the question, but clothes-poles, an' I might of spoken some stronger, but just then he stepped on the edge of the cistern cover 'n' I got such a turn as drove everythin' else clean out o' my mind. You know how easy it is to turn that cover, Mrs. Lathrop, 'n' I must say that if he and it had fell in together there'd have been a fine tale to tell, for the cover always sinks straight to the bottom, 'n' is no joke to find 'n' fish up,—you and I both know that. Ever since the brace give way I 've always got it on my mind to keep the clothes-bars sittin' over it, but now the brace in the clothes-bars is give way too 'n' as a consequence they won't sit over nothin' no more. If money was looser I 'd certainly never spare it gettin' them two braces mended, but money bein' tight and me alone in the house 'n' the most of my callers them as it 's all one to me whether I see 'em in the parlor or in the cistern, I ain't botherin'. I was never one to worry an' scurry unnecessarily, Mrs. Lathrop, an' you know that as well as I do, 'n' to-day I had my mind all done up in my curtains anyway, 'n' I was more'n' a little put out over bein' interrupted, even by a man as come in through the woodshed door, that I never bolt 'cause it 's a understood thing as woodshed doors is not to be come in at. The turn he give me when I hear him clutterin' aroun' in the woodshed!—I thought he was rats, an' then a cat, an' then a rat an' a cat come together, an' then all of a sudden I see him an' remembered the cistern cover."
"But who—" asked Mrs. Lathrop.
Susan looked surprised.