morning, even Mrs. Macy. Mrs. Macy says if it's one of the mornings she can't walk, she'll hire Hiram and his wheelbarrow just as she does for church those Sundays. Everybody's so interested. I told them about the private car, and everybody hopes that he's got one,[Pg 22] and that he'll come in it. Mr. Dill says he must be rich if he's been to the Klondike and come back a tall. He says there's no halfway work about the Klondike. Either you come back a millionaire or else you eat first your dog and then your boots and that's the last of you. Gran'ma Mullins says she never heard of eating boots in the Klondike; she thought you rode on a sled there and that there weren't any women. She says Hiram's spoken of going there once or twice, and Lucy thought maybe the coasting would do him good, but Gran'ma Mullins says not while she's alive, no, sir. Why, it's 'way across America and up a ways, and so many people want to go up that they have to sleep three in a berth, and she says will you only think of Hiram, with the way she's brought him up, three in a berth. If the bed ain't tucked in with Gran'ma Mullins' own particular kind of tuck, Hiram kicks at night and don't get any proper nourishment out of his sleep. No, Gran'ma Mullins says she couldn't think of Hiram in the Klondike[Pg 23] sleeping under a snow-pile and having to hunt up a whale whenever he was in need of more kerosene oil. And she says what good would millions do her with the bones of the only baby she ever had feeding whatever kind of creature they have up there. No, she says, no, and a million times more, no; she's been reading about it in a New York paper that came wrapped around her new stove lid, and she knows all there is to know on that subject now. She says a New York paper is so interesting. She says the way they print them makes it very entertaining. She was reading about a sea serpent, and when she turned, she turned wrong, and she read twelve columns about the suffragettes, looking eagerly to see when the sea serpent was going on again. She says she give up trying to see why they print them so or ever trying to finish any one subject at a time; she just goes regularly through the paper now and lets the subjects fight it out to suit themselves. She says it makes the last part very interesting. You read about a baby, and[Pg 24] after a while you find out whether it's the Queen of Spain's or just a race-horse. She says she supposes next Sunday there'll be a picture of Jathrop in the paper; maybe there'll be a view of this house with you and me. I think that that would be very interesting."

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