"I d'n know as it changes my opinion of Jathrop much, that being his servant," said Miss Clegg suddenly. "It's kind of different, his handing his wife or his son over to me; but his heathen Chinee servant! I don't know as I'm very pleased." "Pleased!" said Mrs. Lupey. "Why, in San Francisco they make 'em live underground like rats." "Maybe that was why you dreamed he was a cat, Susan?" suggested Mrs. Macy, whose brain seemed to grasp at the subject under consideration with special illumination. Susan rose. "I think you'd better go," she said abruptly, "I've got to get dinner. My mind's in no state to deal with all these sides of Jathrop and his Chinaman just now." What the day brought up the street and in and around Mrs. Lathrop's house would take too long to catalogue. Suffice it to say that poor Mrs. Lathrop, who had been for long years the veriest zero in the life of the community, became suddenly its center and apex. When Jathrop went to New York at the end of the week, he left his mother not only sitting, but rocking in the lap of luxury, with her head leaning back against more luxury and her feet braced firmly on yet more luxury. Even her friend over the way was rendered utterly content. And the pleasantest part of it all was the way that it affected Susan Clegg. As Susan sat by Mrs. Lathrop and turned upon her that tender gaze which one old friend may turn on another old friend when the latter's son has suddenly bloomed forth golden, her full heart found utterance thus: "Well, Mrs. Lathrop--well, Mrs. Lathrop, I guess no one will ever doubt anything again. Talk about dreams, _now_! I dreamed Jathrop was a cat, and the reason was that it's a well-known fact that cats _always_ come back. Why, Mrs. Macy told me once how she chloroformed a cat, and put it in a flour sack with a stone, and put the sack in a hogshead of water, and put the cover on the hogshead, and put a stone--another stone--on that, and went to church to hear the minister preach on 'Do unto others as you do unto others,' and when she came back, the cat was asleep on top of the hogshead, and Mrs. Macy got the worst shock she ever got. So you can easy see why I dreamed Jathrop was a cat; and he _did_ come back. "I declare that'll always be the pleasantest recollection of my life, how I met him at the station and how we came chatting up the street together. How he has improved, Mrs. Lathrop--not but what he was always handsome! There was always something noble about Jathrop. Gran'ma Mullins said yesterday as he made her think of a man she saw in a play once as stood on his crossed legs in front of a fire and smoked. So careless.