don't like the way he's stinted things as is necessary and put all the money in things as had better been left out. Necessities before everything is my motto. What use, I'd like to know, is that cupid and rose cornish? But he puts that there just to catch dust and leaves out the whole of one parlor wall. If you'll believe me, Mrs. Lathrop, there's not a hair or hide of a wall between my entry hall and my parlor. Nothing but a pair of white posts as most people use on their piazzas. How I'm ever going to keep that parlor dark I don't see; for he's got glass over the front door and on both sides of it, and no shutters to keep the sun out. He's built in both the kitchen stove and the ice box, and for the life of me, I can't find no reasonable way of taking the ashes out of the one or the water out of the other. The builder says the ashes dump into a place in the cellar and the water from the ice drains down a pipe underneath the house. But I don't like neither plan. The drip from a ice box is a very cheering sound, I think, and with hot ashes going down cellar where you can't see 'em, I'll be in deadly fear of the house going up in smoke while I'm dreaming in my bed. The long and the short of it is, Mrs. Lathrop, I feel as I have been assaulted and robbed. Jathrop's took away my home and left me a house as isn't a home to me and never can be. And as far as I can see, he's done the same to you, which is ten thousand times worse, you being his mother." "I--" began Mrs. Lathrop, taking up the letter from her lap so that at last it was forced upon Susan's observance. "From him, I suppose," Miss Clegg instantly concluded, reaching for it. "If he's got anything to say in his defence, I'm sure I'd delight to read it. But no matter what he says, he can't undo to me what he's done to me. I'll never feel the same towards Jathrop, your son or not your son, Mrs. Lathrop, as long as I live." Mrs. Lathrop passed the letter to Miss Clegg. Like all of Jathrop's letters, it was brief and to the point. He announced that he would spend Christmas with his mother in her rebuilt home and would bring with him a friend as his guest. Susan read it over twice, turning the page each time, evidently in hope of finding an enlightening postscript. "Well, of all things!" she exclaimed, as she passed the letter back to her friend. "Coming to see his work of destruction and going to bring _her_ with him!" "He don't--" Mrs. Lathrop endeavored to explain.