"Oh, if he"ll only come back, it"s all I"ll ask!" returned Gran"ma Mullins sadly. "To think he can"t get there for four weeks yet. And think of Hiram in a boat! Why Hiram can"t even see a mirror tipped back and forth without having to go right where he"ll be the only company.
And then to be in a boat! A boat is such a tippy thing. I read about one man being drowned in one last week. They"re hooking for him with dynamite to see if they can even get a piece of him back for his wife.
His wife isn"t much like Lucy, I guess. Oh, Susan, you"ll never know what I"ve stood from Lucy! n.o.body will."
Miss Clegg shook her head and looked about her quarters with an eye that was dubious.
"I"ve got some eggs for supper," said Gran"ma Mullins, "one for you and one for me, and one for either of us as can eat two."
"I can eat two," said Susan, who thought best to declare herself at the outset.
"Is your things all out of the house?" Gran"ma Mullins asked, as they seated themselves at the table.
"Oh, yes," answered Susan, "everything is out! Towards the last we acted more like hens being fed than anything else, but we got everything finished."
"Did you get the clock out safe?"
Susan"s expression altered suddenly. "The clock! Oh, the clock! What _do_ you think happened to that clock? And I didn"t feel to mind it, either."
"Oh, Susan, you didn"t break it!"
"I did. And in sixty thousand flinders. And I"m glad, too. Very glad.
It"s a sad thing as how we may be found out, no matter how careful we sweep up our trackings. And I don"t mind telling you as the bitterest pill in my cup of clearing out has been that very same clock."
"It was such a handsome clock," said Gran"ma Mullins, opening her naturally open countenance still wider. "Oh, Susan! What did happen?"
"You thought it was a handsome clock," said Susan, "and so did I. It was such a handsome clock that we weren"t allowed to pick it up and look at it. Father screwed it down with big screws, so we couldn"t, and he wet "em so they rusted in. I had a awful time getting those screws out to-day, I can tell you. You get a very different light on a dead and gone father when you"re trying to get out screws that he wet thirty-five years ago. Me on a stepladder digging under the claws of a clock for two mortal hours! And when I got the last one out, I had to climb down and wake my foot up before I could do the next thing. Then I got a block and a bed-slat, and I proceeded very carefully to try how heavy that handsome clock--that handsome marble clock--might be. I put the block beside it, and I put the bed-slat over the block and under the clock.
Then I climbed my ladder again, and then I bore down on the bed-slat.
Well, Gran"ma Mullins, you can believe me or not, just as you please, but it"s a solemn fact that nothing but the ceiling stopped that clock from going sky-high. And nothing but the floor stopped me from falling through to China. 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!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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 don"t know what there is about a man as makes his everyday character liking to deceive and his Sunday sense of righteousness satisfied with just calling it fooling. Well, he"s gone now, and the Bible says "to him as hath shall be given," so I guess he"s settling up accounts somewheres. Give me the other egg!"
After supper they stepped over to Mrs. Macy"s, which was next door, and the four sat on the piazza in the pleasant spring twilight. Mrs. Macy was so happy over having Mrs. Lathrop instead of Susan Clegg that she smiled perpetually. Mrs. Lathrop sat and rocked in her old-gold-plush rocker. Gran"ma Mullins and Susan Clegg occupied the step at the feet of the other two.
"Well, Susan," Mrs. Macy remarked meditatively, "I never looked to see you leave your house any way except feet first. Well, well, this certainly is a funny world."
"Yes," returned Susan, brief for once, "it certainly is."
"It"s a very sad world, I think," contributed Gran"ma Mullins with a heavy, heavy sigh. "My goodness, to think this time last spring Hiram was spading up the potato patch! And now where is he?"
"n.o.body knows," answered Susan. "See how many years it was till Jathrop come back. But I do hope for your sake, Gran"ma Mullins, that when Hiram does come back he won"t take it into his head to buy this house and build it over for you."
Gran"ma Mullins looked at Mrs. Macy, and Mrs. Macy looked back at Gran"ma Mullins, and a message flashed and was answered in the glances.
"Well, Susan," said Gran"ma Mullins with neighborly interest, "you do see that the house needs fixing up, don"t you?"
Susan was the owner and Mrs. Macy only the tenant, and the implication was not at all pleasing to her. She turned with the air of the weariest worm that had ever done so and gave Gran"ma Mullins a look that could only be translated as an admonition to mind her own business. Whereupon Gran"ma Mullins promptly subsided, and the subject did not come up again.
It was on a Monday--the very next Monday--that the workmen arrived and set to work to demolish the outer casing of the homes of Susan and Mrs.
Lathrop. Susan went up and stood about for an hour, viewing the way they did it with great but resigned scorn. She went every day thereafter, and her heart was rent at the sight of the sacrilege. Then, to add to her woe, Gran"ma Mullins proved less soothing than had been expected, and Susan suffered keenly at her hands.
"Oh, Mrs. Lathrop," she said one morning, when the exigencies of shopping left the two old friends full freedom of intercourse, "if I"m going to live in that house for this whole summer, the first thing that I"ll have to do is either to change Gran"ma Mullins or change me! I can see that. Why, I never heard anything like Gran"ma Mullins" views on Hiram. You"ve heard Mrs. Macy, and I"ve told you what Lucy"s told me whenever I"ve met her, but I never had no idea it was anything like what it is. I"m stark, raving crazy hearing about Hiram. Gran"ma Mullins says no child was ever like Hiram, and I begin to wonder if it ain"t so.
No child ever made such an impression on his mother before,--I can take my Bible oath on that, for she"s talking about him from the time I wake till long after I"m asleep,--and she remembers things in the stillness of the night and wakes me up to hear "em for fear she"ll forget "em before morning. Last night she was up at two to tell me how Hiram used to shut his eyes before he went to sleep when he was a baby. She said he had a different way of doing it from any other child that"s ever been born. He picked it all up by himself. She couldn"t possibly tell me just how he did it, but it was most remarkable. He had it in May and well into June the year he was born, but along in July he began to lose it, and by October he opened and shut just like other people"s babies.
That"s what I was woke up to hear, Mrs. Lathrop, and Herod was a sweet and good-tempered mother of ten compared to me as I listened. And then at daybreak if she didn"t come in again to explain as Hiram was so different from all other babies that he crept before he walked, and the first of his trying to walk he climbed up a chair leg."
"Why, Jathrop--" volunteered Mrs. Lathrop.
"Of course. They all do. But I must say I don"t see how I"m going to stand it till my house is ready to receive me back with open bosom if this is the way she"s going on straight along. I wouldn"t stay with Mrs.
Macy because I was tired of hearing what she said Gran"ma Mullins said about Hiram, but it never once struck me that if I stayed with Gran"ma Mullins I"d have it all to hear straight from the fountain mouth. My lands alive, Mrs. Lathrop, you never hear the beat! Hiram used to wrinkle up his face when she washed it, and he never wanted to have a bath. And he used to bring mud turtles into the house; and when she thinks of that and how now he"s off for the Klondike, she says she feels like going straight after him. She says she could be very useful in the Klondike. She could polish his pick and his sled-runners, and hang up his snowy things, and wash out his gold and his clothes. She says she can"t just see how they wash out gold, but she knows how to polish silver, and she says mother-love like hers can pick up anything. She goes on and on till I feel like going to the Klondike myself. I"m getting a great deal of sympathy for Lucy. Lucy always said she could have been happy with Hiram--maybe--if it hadn"t been for his mother.
Lucy"s got no kind of tender feeling for Gran"ma Mullins, and I certainly don"t feel to blame her none."
"Is your--?" asked Mrs. Lathrop, striving towards pleasanter paths.
"Well, it ain"t burnt up yet," answered Susan. "I stopped at Mr. Sh.o.r.es"
coming back and took a look at it, and I was far from pleased to find the door as opens into the next room to the room as my furniture is locked up in a little open. Goodness knows who"d opened it, but it looked very much like some one had been trying my door, to me. I asked Mr. Sh.o.r.es, and I saw at a glance as it was news to him, which shows just how much interest he"s taking in looking out for my things. He said maybe the cat had pushed it open. The cat! I unlocked my door and went in. The furniture"s all safe enough, but it"s enough to put any housekeeper"s heart through the clothes wringer only to see how it"s piled. The beds is smashed flat along the wall, and wherever they could turn a table or a chair upside down and plant something on the wrong side of it, they"ve done it. As for the way the dishes is combined, I can only say that the Lord fits the back to the burden, so the wash-bowls is bearing everything. They"ve put Mother"s picture in a coal-hod for safety, and the coal-hod is sitting on the bookcase. It"s a far from cheering sight, Mrs. Lathrop, but you know I was against being built over from the start. 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.
I d"n know what I"m going to do this summer. It would just drive an ordinary woman crazy. But I presume I"ll survive."
Mrs. Lathrop looked slightly saddened. "Well, Susan,--" she began to murmur sympathetically.
"Oh, it doesn"t matter," said Susan. "Of course, if it gets where I can"t stand it, we"ll just have to change houses, that"s all."
VII
SUSAN CLEGG UNSETTLED
Life under the roof of Gran"ma Mullins eventually--and eventually was a matter of days rather than weeks--became unbearable for Susan Clegg. At least, she so decided, and finding opportunity in the fact that both Gran"ma Mullins and Mrs. Macy had gone to market, Susan hastened to her old friend, Mrs. Lathrop, and laid open her fresh burden of woes.
"I can"t stand it, Mrs. Lathrop," she declared with strongest emphasis, "I can"t stand it. No matter what the Bible says, a saint on a gridiron would smile all over and wriggle for nothing but joy only to think as where he was and wasn"t boarding with Gran"ma Mullins. It"s awful.
That"s what it is--awful. I never had no idea that nothing could be so awful. I"ve got to where I"m thinking very seriously of leaving my property to Lucy. I"m becoming very sorry for Lucy. Lucy isn"t properly appreciated. Why, Hiram was stung by a bee once,--no ordinary bee, but a bee a third bigger than the usual bee,--and it swelled up all different from common, and Gran"ma Mullins thought he was surely going to die right there before her streaming eyes. But Hiram was so bright he remembered about putting mud on bee-bites, and he did it. Only there wasn"t no mud, and n.o.body knew what they could do about it. But Hiram"s mind wasn"t like the mind of a ordinary person. Hiram"s mind is all different, and Hiram said, just as quick as scat, to mix water and earth and make some mud. So they did, and the water and earth, Gran"ma Mullins says, made the finest mud she ever saw. They covered up Hiram"s bee-bite with it, and it didn"t leave so much as a scar. And now there"s Hiram in the Klondike, knowing just what to do when bit by a bee, but without a notion what to put on if a seal catches him unawares. And all this going on hour after hour, Mrs. Lathrop, and me sitting there waiting for my dinner, half mad anyway over the way my dead-and-gone father"s home is being torn limb from limb, and in no mood to listen to anything. Oh, laws, no! It"s no use. I can"t stand it, and I won"t either."
Susan paused expressively.
Mrs. Lathrop gasped. "What will--?"
"I"m going to find another place to live right away," Susan went on.
"I"ve too much consideration for you to ask you to go there, Mrs.
Lathrop, and besides, I feel it would be exchanging the fire for the stew-pan for me to come here. I"m going this town over this very afternoon, and I think I"ll find some place where I can sleep part of the night, at any rate. I guess I got about three quarters of a hour"s sleep last night. Gran"ma Mullins woke me up weeping on the foot of my bed before daylight. Just before daylight is her special time for recollecting how Hiram used to drink milk out of a cup when he was a baby, and how he used to eat candy if anybody gave him any, and other remarkable doings that he did. My lands, I wish Job could have met Gran"ma Mullins! His friends and his boils would have just been pleasant things to amuse him, then. I"m going first to Mrs. Allen, and then I"m going to every one. I shan"t make no bones about my errand, for everybody knows Gran"ma Mullins. I"ll have the sympathy of the whole community. I need sympathy, and I feel I can soak up a good lot of it if I"m let to."
"How"s the--?" asked Mrs. Lathrop.
"They"re still pulling "em down," said Susan gloomily. "It"s a awful sight, and one that doesn"t give me more strength for Gran"ma Mullins. I shall never have another house that will suit me as mine did, Mrs.
Lathrop. I know that Jathrop means it kindly, and I"m far from being one to hold any gift-horse by the tail, but the truth is the truth, and I must say nothing teaches you to really prize your cupboards like seeing men going through "em with pick-axes. There was many little conveniences in my house as I never really thought much of until now I see "em gone forever. But it"s a poor cat that lives on spilt milk, so I"ll say no more of that, but go back and get ready to hunt up a place to live. For live I must, Mrs. Lathrop, and live I will. And I won"t live by eating and drinking and breathing Hiram Mullins the twenty-four hours round, neither."
Miss Clegg"s round of visits ended, curiously enough, in her establishing herself with Lucy Mullins.