suggested Mrs. Macy, "she's over there alone now."

This idea immediately found favor with Susan. "But I'll have to go in and see what she's up to first," she said. "If she's caught a rat and is making soup in my teapot with it, I shan't feel to enjoy leaving her alone with my teapot."

Mrs. Macy could but feel the extreme justice of this view, and Susan, whose countenance indicated that she was sorely beset by misgivings, went into the house.[Pg 43]

[Pg 43]

When she came out, her face wore a relieved expression.

"She's all safe," she said. "She's asleep on the floor. I must say it's changed my feelings toward her. It shows she knows her place."

They walked sedately to Mrs. Lathrop's. They climbed the back steps, and they knocked.

Mrs. Lathrop was busy making preparations for dinner. She came to the door with a promptitude which, in view of her well-known habit of deliberation, was little short of miraculous.

"We came to see how you were," said Mrs. Macy.

"Come in," said Mrs. Lathrop.

They walked in and seated themselves on two of the wooden-bottomed kitchen chairs. Mrs. Lathrop went on with her work. She was uncommonly active, and her face wore a broad, unusual smile. "Jathrop's gone up to the cemetery," she said. "He's going to have a monument put up to his father."[Pg 44]

[Pg 44]

"What do you think of—?" interrupted Susan.

"Yes, we come to—" began Mrs. Macy.

"He's going," continued Mrs. Lathrop, taking down a plate and blowing the thick dust from its surface, "to have an awful handsome monument put up. Not a animal like you put up to your father, Susan, but a angel hanging to a pillar with both hands and feeling for a cloud with its feet. He showed me the picture. And he's going to have the parlor papered and give the town a watering-trough for horses, with a tin cup on a chain for people, and he's—"

"Yes, but—" interrupted Susan.

"You know, of course—" began Mrs. Macy.

Mrs. Lathrop swept off the top of 

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