If he's rich enough to have a private car, I expect this town will open its eyes. You'll see a great change in your position, Mrs. Lathrop, if Jathrop comes in a private car to-morrow morning. There's something about a private car as makes everybody step around lively. I don't say that I shan't respect him more myself if he comes in a private car. But he can sleep one night in father's room, anyway, although if he calls it being rich to come home with just two or three thousand, I think he'd better understand it's for just one night right from the start. I wouldn't want Jathrop to think that I had any time to waste on him if he calls just two or three thousand being rich. It'd be no wonder I dreamed he was a cat, if he's got the face to call that[Pg 20] being rich. But that would be just like Jathrop. You know yourself that if Jathrop could ever do anything to disappoint anybody, he never let the chance slide. I never had no use for Jathrop Lathrop, as you know to your cost, Mrs. Lathrop. But, still, if he really is rich, I haven't got anything against him, and I'll tell you what I'll do right now: I'll go home and put that room in order and get my supper, and then after supper I'll just run down to the square and see if anybody else knows, and then I'll come back and tell you if they do. It's no use your trying to put things a little in order, because you couldn't straighten this place up in a month, and, besides, it isn't worth fussing till we know how rich he is. He may just have writ that in for a joke—to break it to you gently that he's coming back again to live here. Heaven help you if that's the case, Mrs. Lathrop, for Jathrop never will. It isn't in me to deceive so much as a fly on the window, and I never have deceived you and I never will."[Pg 21]

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With which promise Susan took her departure.

It was all of three hours—quite nine in the evening—when Susan came back. She found Mrs. Lathrop transferred to her back porch and seemingly in a somewhat less complete state of total paralysis than when she had left her.

Mrs. Lathrop looked up as her friend approached and smiled.

"Nobody knew," Susan announced as she mounted the steps, "but every one knows now, for I told them. Well, Mrs. Lathrop, you never saw anything like it. There isn't a person in town as ever expected to see Jathrop again, and only about three as always thought he'd come back rich. Every one's going to the station to-morrow 

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