Susan Clegg and Her Love Affairs
treasure that layeth up in heaven, he doesn't mean no chicken—he means me."

[Pg 37]

Susan paused and shook her head angrily.

"I don't doubt but what he's sorry," said Mrs. Macy; "maybe he married a Chinese[Pg 38] for fear any other kind would remind him of you."

[Pg 38]

Miss Clegg rejected this possible poetic view of Jathrop's action with a look of great disgust accompanied by another shake of the head.

"I don't believe it's very often that a man ever marries some other woman on account of any other woman. That's very pretty in books, but books ain't life. Life's life, and if Jathrop Lathrop's married that heathen Chinese, he's got very strange notions of life, and that's all I can say. Why, if she didn't lug that heavy bag along and walk a little back, and he never bothered to speak to her. She's very different from what I'd have been, I can tell you. You can maybe fancy me carrying Jathrop Lathrop's bag a little behind Jathrop Lathrop! I think I see myself. 'How's Susan Clegg?' He'll soon find out how Susan Clegg is. What do you think, Mrs. Macy, what do you think? When we came to his mother's gate, he just stopped, said he thought she'd like him alone best,[Pg 39] said to me, 'Give Hop Loo some breakfast, will you?'—and then if my gentleman didn't walk through the gate and shut it after him! Well, I never did. There was me and his wife carefully shut out on the other side of the fence like we was pigs. And then I had to bring her over here and give her father's room. What would my dead and gone father say to a Chinese woman having his room, I wonder! Father had very fine feelings for a man as got about so little, and if he was alive, I don't believe no Jathrop Lathrop would have gone sending no heathen Chinese wife to live with me. She won't live with me long, I can tell you that to your face, Mrs. Macy. I took her because I was too dumb did up over having a gate shut in my face by Jathrop Lathrop to do anything else, but I ain't intending to have her long. I've always been for shutting the Chinese out, and I ain't going back on my principles at my time of life. No, indeed. 'How's Susan Clegg?'"

[Pg 39]

Susan paused angrily. Her repetition of[Pg 40] the deceptive phrase in Jathrop's 
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