"'How's Susan Clegg?'" quoted Susan in a tone of reflective wrath. "I don't know whether you know it or not, Mrs. Macy, but Jathrop asked after me in his letter to his mother, and him with a Chinese wife. 'How's Susan Clegg?' What did he write that for if he was married, I'd like to know." "Maybe he wanted to know how you were," suggested Mrs. Macy. The look she received in recognition of this offered explanation led to her immediately proposing to go on home. "You've got the Chinaman to look after, anyhow," she added. "You'd better come in while I go up and look at him again," said Susan shortly. "It's a very strange sensation to be alone in your house with what you fully and freely take to your dead father's bed and board, supposing it's a wife, and then find out as it's her son instead. Come on in." Mrs. Macy was easily persuaded, and they thereupon went up the walk. "I guess I'll go see if he's still asleep," Susan said when they reached the piazza, and Mrs. Macy forthwith sat down to await what might come of it. Susan was absent but a few minutes; she returned with a fresh layer of disapproval upon her face. "Is he still sleeping?" Mrs. Macy asked. "Yes, he's still sleeping," Miss Clegg replied, jerking a chair forward for herself. "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." "And so Jathrop's rich," said Mrs. Macy, rocking agreeably to and fro, and evidently striving toward more pleasant conversation. "Yes," said Susan darkly, "rich and with a Chinese wife somewhere. Just as often as I think of Jathrop Lathrop writing, 'How's Susan Clegg,' with a Chinese wife I feel more and more tempered, and I can't conceal my feelings. I never was one to conceal anything; if I had a Chinese wife the whole world might know it." Just here Gran'ma Mullins hove in sight, coming slowly and laboriously up the street. "Why, there's Gran'ma Mullins!" Mrs. Macy exclaimed. "She's surely coming to see you, too." Both ladies remained silent, watching the progress of Gran'ma Mullins. Gran'ma Mullins arrived a good deal out of breath. Susan brought a chair out of the house for her. "I come to--tell you," panted the new visitor as soon as she had attained unto the chair, "that Jathrop's--things is--coming." "What things?" asked Susan. "They all come on--the ten o'clock--from the junction; Hiram is helping unload." "What's he brought?" Susan asked. "Well, he's brought an automobile," said Gran'ma Mullins, "and a lot of other trunks and boxes."