"I don't blame you one mite, Susan," said Mrs. Macy warmly; "I wish Mrs. Lupey was here. She wanted to come, too, but she's got her bag to pack to go home. She only come for one night, and to-night'll make two, so she wants to get packed. But she knows all about the Chinese. Her husband's got a cousin who is a missionary in China, and she could have felt for you. The cousin's got eleven Chinese servants besides a Bible class of two as she's training to be missionaries after they're trained. Mrs. Lupey says she'd have known what to do when that Chinese lady got off the train this morning. They don't let 'em ride in the same cars in China."
Just here Jathrop came out of his mother's front door and walked down the path. Both ladies were freshly shocked by the sight. At the gate he turned in the opposite direction. Both ladies stared after him. Soon he was out of sight. Then they stared at each other.
"Well, what is he up to now?" Mrs. Macy finally ejaculated.
"I don't know," said Susan in a tone of complete despair as to ever again gaining any insight into the motives which moved Jathrop, "I d'n know, Mrs. Macy. Don't ask me anything about Jathrop Lathrop after he's gone home to see his mother and has handed me over a Chinese wife to board. He may be gone up to Mrs. Brown's to run off with Amelia for all I know. Nothing is ever going to surprise me any more after this day. I only know one thing, if he does run off with Amelia, that Chinee'll find herself and his valises dumped off of my premises pretty quick. I never was one for false feelings, and I should see no call for Christian charity toward a heathen who comes to me with two black bags on her legs and a dressing-sack for an overcoat."
"I wonder if Jathrop likes her wearing such clothes," said Mrs. Macy. "Everybody is wondering."
"I don't know," said Miss Clegg, "men are very queer. There's no telling what they are going to fancy till they get out of the train married to it. Think of his having the face to write 'How's Susan Clegg?' and him married to that puzzle-blocks thing all the time. I wonder what his mother said when he told her!"
"Let's go over and see Mrs. Lathrop!" suggested Mrs. Macy, "she's over there alone now."
This idea immediately found favor with Susan. "But I'll have to go in and see what she's up to first," she said. "If she's caught a rat and is making soup in my teapot with it, I shan't feel to enjoy leaving her alone with my teapot."
Mrs. Macy could but feel the extreme justice of this view, and Susan, whose countenance indicated that she was sorely beset by misgivings, went into the house.
When she came out, her face wore a relieved expression.
"She's all safe," she said. "She's asleep on the floor. I must say it's changed my feelings toward her. It shows she knows her place."
They walked sedately to Mrs. Lathrop's. They climbed the back steps, and they knocked.
Mrs. Lathrop was busy making preparations for dinner. She came to the door with a promptitude which, in view of her well-known habit of deliberation, was little short of miraculous.
"We came to see how you were," said Mrs. Macy.
"Come in," said Mrs. Lathrop.
They walked in and seated themselves on two of the wooden-bottomed kitchen chairs. Mrs. Lathrop went on with her work. She was uncommonly active, and her face wore a broad, unusual smile. "Jathrop's gone up to the cemetery," she said. "He's going to have a monument put up to his father."
"What do you think of – ?" interrupted Susan.
"Yes, we come to – " began Mrs. Macy.
"He's going," continued Mrs. Lathrop, taking down a plate and blowing the thick dust from its surface, "to have an awful handsome monument put up. Not a animal like you put up to your father, Susan, but a angel hanging to a pillar with both hands and feeling for a cloud with its feet. He showed me the picture. And he's going to have the parlor papered and give the town a watering-trough for horses, with a tin cup on a chain for people, and he's – "
"Yes, but – " interrupted Susan.
"You know, of course – " began Mrs. Macy.
Mrs. Lathrop swept off the top of the rolling-pin with the stove-brush. "And he's going to build me on a bedroom right off the hall," she continued, "and put a furnace under the whole house. And one of those lamps that haul up and down, and a new set of kitchen things, and he'll come here every year and see if I want anything else, and if I do, I'm to have it. I'm to have a pew in church, even if I never do go to church, and a paper every day, and his baby picture done big, and be fitted for new glasses."
"But, Mrs. Lathrop – " Susan interrupted, seeing that Mrs. Lathrop was surely still in ignorance as to her Mongolian daughter-in-law.
"Yes, you – " began Mrs. Macy.
"Liza Em'ly is to do all the sewing I want," went on Mrs. Lathrop, proceeding with her baking preparations at a great rate, "and Jathrop'll pay the bill. And any things I want, I'm just to send for, and Jathrop'll pay the bill; and anything I can think of what I want done, I'm just to say so, and Jathrop'll pay the bill."
It seemed as if Susan Clegg would burst at this. It was plain now that Jathrop really was rich, and here was his mother supposing the rose was utterly thornless.
"But did he tell you about his wife?" she broke in desperately. "That's what I want to know."
Mrs. Lathrop, who was mixing butter and sugar together in a yellow bowl, stopped suddenly and stared.
"His wife!" she said blankly.
"Yes, his wife," repeated Susan.
"The wife he brought back with him," explained Mrs. Macy.
"The wife he – " Mrs. Lathrop pushed the yellow bowl a little back on the table and rested her hands on the edge. They trembled visibly; "the wife he – " she repeated.
"Surely you know that he brought his wife back with him?" said Mrs. Macy. "Surely he's told you?"
Mrs. Lathrop – turned her usual dumb self again – looked at Mrs. Macy with almost unseeing eyes.
"I – " she ejaculated faintly, "no, he – "
"Now, you see," exclaimed Susan, half to the friend and half to the stricken mother, "it don't make any difference what a man turns into outside, he stays just the same inside. What have I always said to you, Mrs. Lathrop? You can't make no kind of a purse out of ears like Jathrop's. Jathrop Lathrop could turn into fifty millionaires, and he'd still be Jathrop Lathrop. He can hang all the angels he pleases and water all the horses from here to Meadville, and still he never could be any other man but just himself. And being himself, he never by no manner of means could be frank and open. He was always one that held things back. You thought it was because he didn't have no brains, but you was his mother and naturally looked on the best side of him. But he never deceived me, Mrs. Lathrop; I saw through Jathrop right from the start. There was a foxiness about Jathrop as nobody never fully saw into but me. That was my reason for never marrying him – one of my many reasons, for his foxiness hasn't been the only thing about Jathrop that I've seen through. I never was one to soften the blows to a tempered lamb, so I will say that so many reasons for not loving a man as I've seen in Jathrop I never see in any other man yet. But none of my reasons for not marrying him has ever equalled this new reason as has cropped up now in his bringing home a wife. When a man comes home with a wife, then you do see through him for good and all, and when Jathrop come scrambling out from between those two cars this morning with a heathen Chinee at his heels – "
Mrs. Lathrop screamed loudly. "A – "
"Heathen Chinee," repeated Susan.
"You know what a Chinee is, don't you?" interposed Mrs. Macy; "they're from China, you know."
Mrs. Lathrop retreated to her rocker with a totter.
"Yes, she's a heathen Chinee," said Susan, with unfailing firmness, "the kindest heart in the world couldn't mistake her for anything even as high up as a nigger. Her eyes cross just under her nose, and she's got her hair wound round her head with a piece of black