"
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.
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