"Well, you ain't me," said Miss Clegg, "you ain't me an' you ain't Elijah neither. I talk very kind to Elijah, but there's no livin' in the house with any man as supposes livin' in the house with any other woman is goin' to be pleasanter than livin' in the house with the woman as he's then an' there livin' in the house with. The main thing in life is to keep men down to a low opinion of every woman's cookin' but yours an' keep yourself down to a low opinion of the man. You don't want to marry him then an' he don't want to live with any one else. An' to my order of thinkin' that's about the only way that a woman can take any comfort with a man in the house." CHAPTER V SUSAN CLEGG'S FULL DAY "Well," said Miss Clegg, with strong emphasis, as she mounted Mrs. Lathrop's steps, "I don't know, I'm sure, what I've come over here for this night, for I never felt more like goin' right straight off to bed in all my life before." Then she sat down on the top step and sighed heavily. "It's been a full day," she went on presently; "an' I can't deny as I was nothin' but glad to remember as Elijah was n't comin' home to supper, for as a consequence I sha'n't have it to get. A woman as has had a day like mine to-day don't want no supper anyhow, an' it stands to reason as if I don't feel lively in the first place, I ain't goin' to be made any more so by comin' to see you, for I will remark, Mrs. Lathrop, that seein' you always makes me wonder more'n ever why I come to see you so often when I might just as well stay home an' go to bed. If I was in my bed this blessed minute I'd be very comfortable, which I'm very far from bein' here with this mosquito aimin' just over my slap each time; an' then, too, I'd be alone, an' no matter how hard I may try to make myself look upon bein' with you as the same thing as bein' alone, it is n't the same thing an' you can't in conscience deny _that_, no matter how hard you may sit without movin'." Mrs. Lathrop made no reply to this frank comment on her liveliness, and after a short pause, Miss Clegg sighed heavily a second time, and continued: