d Susan, "an' I shall talk the matter
up with him. Elijah's awful funny, Mrs. Lathrop. However much he roams
around while I'm in church he always hops back in bed an' manages to be
sound asleep when it's time for me to come home. An' I will say this for
him, an' that is as with all his pryin' an' meddlin' he's clever enough
to get things back so I can never see no traces of what he's been at. If
I was n't no sharper than most others, I'd think as he never had stirred
out of bed while I was gone--but I am sharper than others an' it'll take
a sharper young man than Elijah to make me suppose as all is gold that
glitters or that a man left all alone in a house don't take that time to
find out what he's alone in the midst of."

CHAPTER XIV

ADVISABILITY OF NEWSPAPER EXPOSURES

"Well, I don't know I'm sure what I _am_ goin' to do with Elijah," said
Susan Clegg to her friend one evening. "He's just as restless in his
ideas as he is in bed, an' he's not content in bed without untuckin'
everythin' at the foot. I hate a bed as is kicked out at the foot an' I
hate a man as makes a woman have to put the whole bed together again new
every mornin'. I'm sure I don't see no good to come of kickin' nights
an' I've talked to Elijah about layin' still till I should think he
could n't but see how right I am an' how wrong he is, but still he goes
right on kickin', an' now he's got it into his head as he's got to turn
the town topsy-turvy by findin' out suthin' wrong as we'd rather not
know, an' makin' us very uncomfortable by knowin' it, an' knowin' as now
we know it we've got to do suthin' about it, an' that seems to make him
kick more than ever."

"Dear--" ejaculated Mrs. Lathrop.

"He set on the porch for an hour with me last night," Susan went on,
"tryin' to think o' suthin' as he could expose in the paper. He says a
paper ain't nothin' nowadays without it's exposin' suthin, an' a town
ain't fit to have a paper if it ain't got nothin' to expose in it. He
says no closet without some skeleton, an' he should think we'd have
ours, an' in the end he talked so much that I could n't but feel for a
little as maybe he was right an' as we _was_ behind the times, for when
you come to think it over, Mrs. Lathrop, nothin' ever does happen here
as had n't ought to happen--not since Mr. Shores' wife run off with his
clerk, an' that wa'n't no great happenin', for they could n't stand
sittin' on the piazza much longer--every one could see t