heart is set on soda-biscuit 'n' I like my own better than
any one could ever like yours. I don't say that unkindly, Mrs. Lathrop,
for I ain't got a unkind thing about me, 'n' I could n't lay anything up
against you even if I wanted to. Even when I get all at outs with you
over your rockin' I never lay it up against you--we 've been friends too
many years. If you can be happy rockin' through life till some fine day
you rock over backward into your coffin, all I can say is that it won't
be my funeral, 'n' bein' as it will be yours, I shall be too busy that
day to fuss over ifs 'n' ands. I 'm keepin' the board 'n' saw-horses as
father had for you, 'n' the black bow from his door-bell, too, 'n' after
you 're done with them I 'm intendin' to give them to the first needy
'n' deservin' person as comes along in need of 'em."

Susan started down the steps.

"But--" protested Mrs. Lathrop.

"Probably not," said her friend, "but you never can tell. Anyhow I 'm
goin' now. You don't appear to consider how valuable my time is, Mrs.
Lathrop, but that 's another thing as I don't lay up against you."

* * * * *

For the next week Miss Clegg's financial difficulties rubbed on in much
the same way. So did the wedding preparations of Polly Allen and Lucy
Dill. Debts and dates are two things which are famous for movement, and
in between her periods of repose in her own house and of activity about
town Susan seized every chance possible to impart the impending state of
every one's affairs to her neighbor.

"The blacksmith was up again last night," she said one sunny morning,
when the need of hanging out her wash had brought her and Mrs. Lathrop
within conversational distance; "he wants to have his rent a little
lowered so as he can bric-a-brac the side of the crick himself. He says
there 's stones enough to do it, only he must hire a man to help him. I
told him I 'd consider it, 'n' goin' out in the dark he fell over the
scraper. I declare I got a damage-suit chill right down my spine 'n' I
run out with a candle, 'n', thank heaven, he had n't broke nothin' but
the scraper. I 've been wonderin' if it would pay to sue him for that,
but I don't believe I will, because folks has been fallin' over it ever
since father nailed it to the front o' the step so 's to let his pet
weasel go back 'n' forth at the side. The weasel 's been dead for ages,
but the scraper 's never been changed. I wish I could remember that