"Oh, _The Jungle_ isn't so bad," said Susan. "If it was, Roosevelt would have straightened it out soon enough when he was in it himself. But what's awful about Mrs. Sperrit is what she has suffered, for that woman certainly has suffered. She's a lesson once for all as to visiting. No one as hears her is ever going lightly visiting after this. She lost her trunk-key as soon as she landed in the house, and she says she was too took up to miss it for three days, which shows what kind of a time she had. Why, her cousin went right to bed as soon as she got there, because she said as she knowed that Mrs. Sperrit was practical and could do everything better than she could. So that was a nice beginning to begin with. Well, she says such a house you never see. The chickens come into the dining-room, and they was raising mud turtles in the bathtub, and caterpillars in the cake-box. The children was awful right from the start. She slept in the room with two of them, and they woke her up mornings playing shave with the ends of her braids. She found out as they dipped 'em first in the water pitcher and then in the tooth powder to make it like lather." "My heavens alive!" exclaimed Mrs. Lathrop. "Then Jacob, who's only two and a half, ate mashed potatoes with his fingers, which is a thing, Mrs. Sperrit says, as must be seen to be believed, and they all just swum in jam from dawn to dark. She says she never see such children, anyway. Whenever anybody sat down, they'd play she was the Alps, and go back and forth over her wherever they could get a purchase. And she says--would you believe it?--her cousin is got to be so calm that it drives you out of your senses only to see the way she takes things. Mrs. Sperrit says all she can say is as when a woman as isn't practical does go to bed, she's resigned to that degree that you wish you could blow her up with dynamite if only to see her move quick just once." "Why didn't she come home?" asked Mrs. Macy. "My view would be as I'd come home. I said so to her to-day." "She did come home, didn't she?" said Miss Clegg. "You heard her, and you know she's home. It's Mrs. Lathrop as all this is new to, isn't it? Well, Mrs. Lathrop, it would go to your heart to hear what happened to all those little conveniences as she took. There wasn't no sharp knife in the house but hers, so she never see hers after she unpacked it. There wasn't no string or court-plaster either, so they disappeared too. Then they run out of tea the minute they see she brought some, and not being practical, her cousin's teapot naturally didn't have no nose, so she lost her teapot, too. The whole family took her hairbrush and used it for a clothes brush, and she thinks for a shoe brush when she was down-town. Her cousin wore her stockings and her collars, and her cousin's husband slept on the pillow with the blanket folded around him. Not being practical, he liked his feet free." "Well, I nev--!" ejaculated Mrs. Lathrop.