"That's the advantage the rest of the country has over us when it comes to exposin'. They can expose an' expose, an' all the folks who read about it forget an' forget, but here in this community it's different an' you can't count on _our_ forgettin' things a _tall_, an' if Elijah was turned loose I'll venture to say every last one o' them papers would be saved until doomsday. I know that an' knowin' that I very carefully restrain him. There's a many as knows as Mr. Kimball's dried apples is often very under rate, an' a many others as knows whose dead cat that was as Mrs. Sweet had to bury after vowin' she would n't till she smelt as she'd got to. Every last one of us knows what Dr. Brown gets at the drug store when he asks for what he usually gets an' there's a good many as thinks as Mrs. Macy goes to Meadville more on a'count o' Dr. Carter than to see her cousin, Mrs. Lupey. But I was n't goin' to set Elijah swimmin' in any such deep water. Elijah is a young man an' the age to go wrong easy, an' when that age see how easy it is to go wrong they're nothin' but foolish if they waste another second goin' right, so if Elijah wants to go to exposin' he'll have to get his stuff from some one else beside me." "You--" said Mrs. Lathrop. "No, I don't say that," said Miss Clegg, "I'm only human after all an' I can't in conscience deny as I should like to see them as I don't like showed up just as much as any other man as is makin' a business of showin' up his neighbors, likes it. But I know I've got to live here an' it'd be very poor livin' for me after I'd aired myself by way of Elijah. There's a great difference between knowin' things all by yourself an' readin' 'em in the paper, an' I know as that dead cat would cause a great deal o' hard feelin' in print, while buried by Mrs. Sweet it only helps her garden grow. So I shall keep on talkin' as usual, but I shall hold Elijah out o' print an' so keep the country safe." "I--" said Mrs. Lathrop. "Oh, the paper'll do just as well," said Susan; "he's goin' to print one sheet as comes all printed from the city every week an' he says that'll put new zest in the thing. It'll be a great deal better to get the zest that way than to get it exposin'. Zest is suthin' as is always safest a good ways off. Elijah saw that, too, afore he got done last night, for in his hitchin' about he hitched over the edge o' the piazza in the end." "Did--" cried Mrs. Lathrop. "Well, no," said Miss Clegg. "But he tore a lot of things an' smashed a rose bush, but I did n't care about that. I just told him to leave 'em on a chair this mornin' an' I'd sew 'em all up again, an' I done it, an' as to the rose bush, I'll have him get another an' give it to me for a present the next time I go to the city to pick it out myself." CHAPTER XV THE TRIAL OF A SICK MAN IN THE HOUSE "Well, where--" began Mrs. Lathrop in a tone of real pleasure at seeing Miss Clegg come into her kitchen one afternoon a few days after.