up. My belief
is, anyway, that if there's hereafters for some things, there's
hereafters for all. From what I can gather, I reckon I'm a kind of a
cross between a Swedenborgian and a Gates-ajar--that, of course,
engrafted on to a Methodist. Now, that hotel, when it was consumed by
fire, which to it was the same as mortal death, why, it either ascended
into Heaven, in smoke, or it fell, in ashes--to the other place. If it
died worthy, like as not it's undergoin' repairs now for a 'mansion,'
jasper cupalos, an'--but, of course, such as that could be run up in a
twinklin'.

"Still, from what I've heard, it's more likely gone _down_ to its
deserts. It would seem hard for a hotel with so many awned-off corridors
an' palmed embrasures with teet-a-teet sofas, to live along without
sin."

She stood on her step-ladder, wiping the face of the picture as she
spoke, and as she began to back down she discovered the cat under her
elbow, glaring at the picture.

"Yes, Kitty! Spit away!" she exclaimed. "Like as not you see even more
than I do!"

And as she slipped the ladder back into the closet, she remarked--this
to herself, strictly:

"If it hadn't 'a' been for poor puss, I'd 'a' had a heap more pleasure
out o' this picture than what I have had--or will be likely to have
again. The way she's taken on, I've almost come to hate it!"

A serpent had entered her poor little Eden--even the green-eyed monster
constrictor, who, if given full swing, would not spare a bone of her
meager comfort.

A neighbor who chanced to come in at the time, unobserved overheard the
last remark, and Mrs. Morris, seeing that she was there, continued in an
unchanged tone, while she gave her a chair:

"Of course, Mis' Withers, you can easy guess who I refer to. I mean that
combly-featured wench that kep' the books an' answered the telephone at
the hotel--when she found the time from her meddlin'. Somehow, I never
thought about her bein' _burned in_ with Morris till puss give her away.
Puss never did like the girl when she was alive, an' the first time I
see her scratch an' spit at the picture, just the way she used to do
whenever _she_ come in sight, why, it just struck me like a clap o'
thunder out of a clear sky that puss knew who she was a-spittin' at--an'
I switched around sudden--an' glanced up sudden--an'----

"Well, what I seen, I seen! There was that beautied-up typewriter
settin' in the window-sill o' Morris's butler's pantry--an' if she