"Far be it from me, Mrs. Lathrop," said Susan Clegg, returning from an early errand down-town and dropping in at Mrs. Macy's to find her friend still in her own room and rocking in her old-gold stationary rocker. It was now autumn, and to take the chill off the room an oil burner was brightly ablaze. "Far be it from me to say anything disrespectful of such a good Samaritan as your son Jathrop, but as we have it in the scriptures, he certainly does move in a mysterious way his neighbors to inform. It's mighty good of him to go to all the expense of building over my house in a way I'd never in this wide world have had it if I could 'a' understood those plans of that boy architect, and it may be--providing we escape earthquake, fire, blood, and famine--that I'll get into it once more before next summer, notwithstanding it's all of two months behind yours, you being his mother, Mrs. Lathrop, and me only your friend. But a early frost is sure to crack the plaster, and, seeing as the glass blowers has gone on a strike, there's no telling when they'll blow the panes for the windows. Just the same, kind and good as Jathrop is, he might have had more consideration for me as would this day have been his wife, if I'd felt to answer him with a three-letter word instead of a two, than to put me on the pillar of scorn before a community as has known me always as a scrupulous lover of the voracious truth." "You don't--" began Mrs. Lathrop, in mild astonishment. "Yes, I do," continued Susan, with growing indignation. "Jathrop has done his best to make me out a liar, and I don't know as I'll ever be able to hold my head up again. He's struck me in the tenderest spot he could strike me in, and not boldly neither, but in a skulking, underhand way that makes it all the bitterer pill to swallow." "I can't see--" objected Mrs. Lathrop. "No, nor me neither. But he did, and in no time everybody'll know it from Johnny, at the station, to Mrs. Lupey in Meadville, not forgettin' the poor demented over to the insane asylum. And it all comes of those letters I have been getting from Jathrop during the summer." "But--"