Anne Warner

“ You'd know he was Jathrop Lathrop's child just by the way he sleeps. You remember what a one Jathrop always was for sleeping. I don't know as I remember Jathrop's ever being awake till he was fairly grown. Whatever you set him at always just made him more sleepy. You know yourself, Mrs. Macy, as he wouldn't be no grasshopper with Mrs. Lathrop for his mother, but a cocoon is a comet beside what Jathrop Lathrop always was. I don't know whether he's rich or not, but I do know that heathen Chinee is his son, and I know it just by the way he sleeps. ”

“ Judge Fitch says Jathrop's nature was always that deep kind that's easy overlooked. He says he'll have to confess to his shame that some of the time he overlooked him himself. He says it's very difficult to understand a deep nature, because if a deep nature don't make money, there's hardly any way of ever knowing that it really was deep; people just think you're a fool then—like we always thought Jathrop was. You know, nobody ever thought he ever could amount to nothing. You know that yourself, Mrs. Lathrop. But making money lets you see just what a person's got in 'em and see it plain. ”

“ It looks money from the tips of its lightning rods to its cellar windows and is as inviting to robbers as if it had a sign on the gatepost, reading: 'Walk in!' So, however you look at it, there's nobody responsible for my gagging and for whatever is missing but one man, and that man is Jathrop Lathrop. It's easy to be seen as he's no more fit to have money than a crow as steals gold trinkets that cost fortunes and goes and hides 'em in hollow trees. ”

“ Lathrop, for nothing ever does matter to you, and anyway, even if anything had mattered to you before, you'd not mind it now that Jathrop's come back. But just the same a hotel does matter to me. They take very little interest in their housekeeping in hotels, and no matter who's eat off of what, if they can use it again—and they generally can—they always do. Why, they churn up the melted odds and ends of ice-cream and serve 'em out as fresh-made with that cheerful countenance as loveth no giver. And what we'd throw to the cat they scrape right back into the soup pot, and glad enough to get it. ”

“ There is nothing that so quickly develops an independent standpoint as the possession of money; there is nothing that so fully produces a conviction that one is thoroughly justified in doing just exactly what one pleases; there is nothing that leads to quite the same lofty indifference as to whether what pleases one pleases or displeases all the rest of the world.
We have but to look at Jathrop to see that this is true. ”

“ For human nature is human nature, Mrs. Lathrop, and people are always kinder to a woman whose son comes home from the Klondike a millionaire than they are if they had the bother of lynching him, no matter how much he may have deserved it. ”

“ Of all the mean, sly, creeping creatures that ever come up against the back of your legs sudden a cat is the worst. A snake is open and aboveboard beside a cat. You can see a snake. You don't see 'em often around here, thank heaven."
"Well, we haven't seen Jathrop often around here for a long time," said Mrs. Macy, whose mind was as given to easy logical deduction as many of her mental caliber, "and we do see a lot of cats—you know that, Susan." ”

“ She says he's the one love of her life, and she shall marry him if ever he gets sense enough to know what he's doing. If he doesn't, she says she shall take a yacht and sail with him and write books until he dies. She says they can land once in a while to get their provisions and their royalties. But she says the only possible salvation for Elijah, as things are now, will be to stay where he never sees a car to remind him of scenery, or a house to remind him of a stage, for years and years to come. ”

“ Macy. "It'll be a great thing for this town if Jathrop's rich. He'd ought to be very grateful to the place where his happy childhood memories run around barefoot."
"Oh, he'll remember," said Gran'ma Mullins, "it's easy to remember when you've got the money to do it. But I hope to heaven he won't set Hiram off on that track again. Hiram does so want to go away and make a fortune; I'm worried for fear he will all the time. And Lucy wants him to, too. I can't understand a woman as wants a fortune worse than she wants Hiram. Lucy doesn't seem to want Hiram 'round at all any more. ”

“ I've seen in Jathrop I never see in any other man yet. But none of my reasons for not marrying him has ever equalled this new reason as has cropped up now in his bringing home a wife. When a man comes home with a wife, then you do see through him for good and all, and when Jathrop come scrambling out from between those two cars this morning with a heathen Chinee at his heels—"
Mrs. Lathrop screamed loudly. "A—"
"Heathen Chinee," repeated Susan.
"You know what a Chinee is, don't you?" interposed Mrs. Macy; "they're from China, you know." ”

“ Love is a thing as you can't raise and lower just as the fancy strikes you. A woman can't love but once, and I've got a kind of warm bubbling all around my heart as tells me that I've loved that once and that it was Jathrop. It's very strange, Mrs. Lathrop, but I've been thinking of Jathrop a great [Pg 29] deal lately. I keep remembering more and more how much I've been thinking about him. I suppose he was thinking of me, and that's what started me. 'How's Susan Clegg?' I can just seem to hear Jathrop's voice; Jathrop had a very strange voice. ”

“ The insurance men is running all over, like winged ants hatching out, sealing up more doors and more windows every minute and getting more signatures as it was a tornado before they'll unstick them. Nothing can't be really settled till Mrs. Macy comes back. Mrs. Macy is the key to the whole situation."
"But why—?" asked Mrs. Lathrop. ”

“ Jathrop'll have a choice."
"He may be none the better for that," said Susan darkly. "If Jathrop Lathrop is wise, he'll not go routing wildly around like a president after a elephant; he'll stick to what's tried and true. But I have my doubt as to Jathrop's being wise; very few men with money have any sense."
"Who do you think—?" began Mrs. Lathrop, looking intently at Susan.
"I d'n know," said Susan, looking hard at Mrs. Lathrop; "far be it from me to judge." [Pg 210]
"They do say, Susan," said Gran'ma Mullins wisely, "as he'll end up by marrying you. Everybody says so." ”

“ I left in the middle of the night, and I got to New York in the morning, and I didn't have that feeling for nothing. Mr. Kettlewell was at his hotel, and in all my born days I never see a person gladder to see anybody than Mr. Kettlewell was to see me. It's marvelous what a impression a little good cooking will make on a man, even if it's only in cranberry sauce. ”

“ It's one of those truths that the wiser they are, the sadder you get. It's one of those truths as is the whole truth and a little left over; and I'm learning that I'm to be what's left over, more every day. After a life of being independent and living on my own money, I'm now going down on my knees learning the lesson of being humbly grateful for what I don't want. ”

“ I come down to earth with such a bang as brought Felicia Hemans running. And the stepladder shut up on me with such another bang as brought Sam Durny."
"The saints preserve us!" ejaculated Gran'ma Mullins.
"It wasn't a marble clock a tall," confessed Susan. "It was painted wood. That was why Father screwed it down. Oh, men are such deceivers! And the best wife in the world can't develop 'em above their natural natures. I expect it was always a real pleasure to Father to think as Mother and me didn't know that marble clock was wood. ”

“ I consider a hen is one woman when she's seated at work and had ought not to be called off by any man alive. But, laws, that young man wasn't any respecter of work or hens or anything else! He called himself an artist, and since I've been studying these plans, I've begun to think as he was really telling the truth, for artists is all crazy, and anything crazier than these plans I never did see. Not content with having us wash in the sink and the cellar, we're to wash under the front stairs, too, not to speak of all but swimming up-stairs."
Mrs. Lathrop just smiled and rocked more. ”

“ I don't believe it's very often that a man ever marries some other woman on account of any other woman. That's very pretty in books, but books ain't life. Life's life, and if Jathrop Lathrop's married that heathen Chinese, he's got very strange notions of life, and that's all I can say. Why, if she didn't lug that heavy bag along and walk a little back, and he never bothered to speak to her. She's very different from what I'd have been, I can tell you. You can maybe fancy me carrying Jathrop Lathrop's bag a little behind Jathrop Lathrop! I think I see myself. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When I see the walls of my happy home being smashed flat and then picked over like they was raisins to see what'll do to use again, and then when I see my furniture put together in a way as no one living can make head or tail of, and when I see myself woke up at three in the night to be told that sometimes when Hiram was a baby he would go to sleep and sometimes he wouldn't, why I feel as if that Roman as they rolled down hill in a barrel because he wouldn't stay anywhere else where they put him was sitting smoking cross-legged compared to me. ”

“ Macy'll take one of us and Gran'ma Mullins the other. Gran'ma Mullins says with Hiram gone to the Klondike and Lucy gone to her father, either you or me can have their room; only for the love of heaven we mustn't look like Hiram in bed; for her heart is aching and breaking, and the car-wheels of his train ain't grinding on any track half as much as they're grinding in her tenderest spot. Now the question is, Mrs. Lathrop, which'll go which, and it's a thing as I must consider very carefully, for Lord knows I don't want to be no more miserable than I've got to be. ”

“ Jathrop was common looking, but not a common cat kind of common looking. It was a very strange dream, Mrs. Lathrop, the more I consider it, the more I can't see what give it to me. I finished up the doughnuts just before I went to bed, for I was afraid they'd mold in another day with this damp weather, but it don't seem as if [Pg 5] doughnuts ought to result in cats like Jathrop. If I'd dreamed of mice, it'd been different, for some of the doughnuts was gnawed in a way as showed as there'd been mice in the jar. It does beat all how mice get about. ”

“ So's far as I can see it was the devil and not the Lord as guided Jathrop from the first, and everything as has happened since shows the devil is still guiding him. Everything he turns his mind to goes by contraries. I'm not saying anything against the goodness of Jathrop's intentions, mind you, Mrs. Lathrop, but no matter how good they are, evil and misery certainly seems sure to follow. ”

“ And so you can maybe imagine the shock to the minister when he got word as his own flesh and blood daughter had not only written a book but got it all printed without consulting him. His wife says he was completely done up and could hardly speak for quite a little while, and later when the newspaper clippings begin to come, he had to go to bed and have a salt-water cloth over his eyes. I tell you, Mrs. Lathrop, the minister is a very sensitive nature; it's no light thing to a sensitive nature to get a shock like a daughter's writing a book. ”

“ What good will your having the parlor papered be with everybody ashamed to go to see a woman who has got a Chinese daughter. To my order of thinking, you was better off poor. Why, they eat the hen's nests, the Chinese do, and prefer 'em to the eggs. It's small wonder I dreamed Jathrop was a cat, with him descending on us like the wrath of heaven married to a China woman. Jathrop's no fool though, and if you'd seen that humble heathen going along back of him with his big valise, you'd have to see as the man as picks out a wife like that never could have been a fool. ”

“ It's no wonder I dreamed he was a cat, for of all the sly, back-door things a cat is the meanest. And there was always something very cat-like about Jathrop Lathrop—something soft and slow and creepy—nothing bold and out-spoken. I might have known as even if he did come home rich, he'd find a way to even it up. And now look how he has evened it up. Think of your grandchildren; there won't be one of 'em able to ever look [Pg 54] anybody straight in more'n one eye at once. Marrying Chinese is terrible, anyway—in some States it's forbidden. ”

“ It's all very humiliating, and it'd 'a' been much better to let people ask me and never said nothing back a tall. When people is in the dark, they've got to imagine for themselves, and as long as they don't tell what they imagine to others, no piece in a newspaper can never make 'em blush. I can tell you it's learnt me a lesson as I won't soon forget. I'll never get over the way Mr. Kimball looked at me when he said as how sisal was hemp; and me thinking all the time it was a animal when it was a herb. Well, Mrs. Lathrop, it's a ill wind that don't chill the shorn lamb. ”

“ When a man's out of your sight, you've always got to wonder, and most of the time that's all in the world you can do about a man. Now Mrs. Macy's perfectly independent, she can go where she pleases and come down when she pleases, and she hasn't got to tell what she saw unless she wants to. Mrs. Brown says she ain't never been nowhere. It's plain to be seen as Mrs. Brown's envying Mrs. Macy her trip."
"But why—?" began Gran'ma Mullins with great determination.
"That's just it," replied Susan promptly. ”

“ Lathrop," Susan went on, the discontent ringing somewhat more distinctly in her tone, "as I'm much taken with this idea of building us over, even if Jathrop does mean it kindly. I know there's a many as would nigh to go out of their senses at the very idea of being made over new for nothing, but I was never one to go out of my senses easy, and that young man on the woodpile doesn't give me any kind of secure feeling as to what he'll make out of my house. ”

“ She says—he says he'll know no peace night or day now until he's read 'Liza Em'ly's book. I guess it's no wonder that he's nervous. 'Liza Em'ly's been a handful for years, and since she fell in love with Elijah, there's been just no managing her a tall. If Elijah'd loved her, of course it would have been different, but Elijah wasn't a energetic nature, and 'Liza Em'ly was, and when a energetic nature loves a man like Elijah, there's just no knowing where they will end up. ”

“ I don't know what any one thought she would do when she set out for the city to earn her own living, but there wasn't a soul in town as expected her to do it, let alone writing a book, too. I can't see whatever gives any one the idea of earning their living by writing books. Books always seem so sort of unnecessary to me, anyway—I ain't read one myself in years. No one in this community ever does read, and that's what makes everybody so surprised over 'Liza Em'ly, after living among us so long and so steady, starting up all of a sudden and doing anything like this. ”