"Oh, she's gone straight over to Meadville," said Susan. "Oh, my, she says, but think of her feelings as she sat inside that nice, comfortable house and realized that she was the only person in town with a roof over her head! You see, she heard me talking with the insurance men, and she didn't know why we was to be sealed up, but she got it all straight as we was going to be turned out of house and home, and she says she made up her mind as no one should ever know as she was in a house and so come capering up to put her out. She says she settled down as still as a mouse, made no smoke, and never lit so much as a candle nights. Mrs. Macy is surely most foxy!" "And she's gone to Meadville?" said Gran'ma Mullins. "Yes, she didn't want to pay board here, and her own house hasn't got no roof, so she's gone to Mrs. Lupey. Old Doctor Carter was over here to appraise the damage done to folks, and he took her back with him." "I wonder if she'll ever--" wondered Gran'ma Mullins. "I d'n know. If folks talk about a marriage long enough, it usually ends up that way. Doctor Carter and Mrs. Macy has been kind of jumping at each other and then running away for fifteen years or so. They say he'd like her money, but he hates to be bothered with her." "She wouldn't like to be bothered with him, either," said Gran'ma Mullins. "I know," said Susan. "That's what's making so few people like to get married nowadays. They don't want to be bothered with each other." Mrs. Lathrop fixed her little, black, beady eyes hard on Susan. Susan stared straight ahead. IX SUSAN CLEGG'S PRACTICAL FRIEND "Mrs. Sperrit can't stand it no longer, and she's going visiting," announced Susan Clegg to the three friends who, seated together on Mrs. Macy's piazza, had been awaiting her return from down-town. Both Mrs. Macy and Gran'ma Mullins were now back in their own houses after the temporary absence due to the cyclone, and Mrs. Lathrop and she who might yet be her daughter-in-law were reëstablished as their paying guests. "Why, I never knew that Mr. Sperrit was that kind of a man," said Gran'ma Mullins, opening her eyes very wide indeed. "I wouldn't say he's han'some, and I wouldn't say he's entertaining; but I always thought they got on well together."