would go to sleep and sometimes he wouldn't, why I feel as if that Roman as they rolled down hill in a barrel because he wouldn't stay anywhere else where they put him was sitting smoking cross-legged compared to me. I d'n know what I'm going to do this summer. It would just drive an ordinary woman crazy. But I presume I'll survive." Mrs. Lathrop looked slightly saddened. "Well, Susan,--" she began to murmur sympathetically. "Oh, it doesn't matter," said Susan. "Of course, if it gets where I can't stand it, we'll just have to change houses, that's all." VII SUSAN CLEGG UNSETTLED Life under the roof of Gran'ma Mullins eventually--and eventually was a matter of days rather than weeks--became unbearable for Susan Clegg. At least, she so decided, and finding opportunity in the fact that both Gran'ma Mullins and Mrs. Macy had gone to market, Susan hastened to her old friend, Mrs. Lathrop, and laid open her fresh burden of woes. "I can't stand it, Mrs. Lathrop," she declared with strongest emphasis, "I can't stand it. No matter what the Bible says, a saint on a gridiron would smile all over and wriggle for nothing but joy only to think as where he was and wasn't boarding with Gran'ma Mullins. It's awful. That's what it is--awful. I never had no idea that nothing could be so awful. I've got to where I'm thinking very seriously of leaving my property to Lucy. I'm becoming very sorry for Lucy. Lucy isn't properly appreciated. Why, Hiram was stung by a bee once,--no ordinary bee, but a bee a third bigger than the usual bee,--and it swelled up all different from common, and Gran'ma Mullins thought he was surely going to die right there before her streaming eyes. But Hiram was so bright he remembered about putting mud on bee-bites, and he did it. Only there wasn't no mud, and nobody knew what they could do about it. But Hiram's mind wasn't like the mind of a ordinary person. Hiram's mind is all different, and Hiram said, just as quick as scat, to mix water and earth and make some mud. So they did, and the water and earth, Gran'ma Mullins says, made the finest mud she ever saw. They covered up Hiram's bee-bite with it, and it didn't leave so much as a scar. And now there's Hiram in the Klondike, knowing just what to do when bit by a bee, but without a notion what to put on if a seal catches him unawares. And all this going on hour after hour, Mrs. Lathrop, and me sitting there waiting for my dinner, half mad anyway over the way my dead-and-gone father's home is being torn limb from limb, and in no mood to listen to anything. Oh, laws, no! It's no use. I can't stand it, and I won't either." Susan paused expressively. Mrs. Lathrop gasped. "What will--?"