SUSAN CLEGG

AND HER LOVE AFFAIRS

BY ANNE WARNER

Author of "The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary," "Sunshine Jane," etc.

WITH FRONTISPIECE BY
H. M. BRETT

BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1916

Copyright, 1916,
By Little, Brown, and Company.

All rights reserved

Published, May, 1916
Reprinted, May, 1916

"Nothing but the floor stopped me from falling through to China." Frontispiece. See Page 144.

CONTENTS

SUSAN CLEGG AND HER LOVE AFFAIRS

I

SUSAN CLEGG'S COURTING

Mrs. Lathrop sat on her front piazza, and Susan Clegg sat with her. Mrs. Lathrop was rocking, and Susan was just back from the Sewing Society. Neither Mrs. Lathrop nor Susan was materially altered since we saw them last. Time had moved on a bit, but not a great deal, and although both were older, still they were not much older.

They were not enough older for Mrs. Lathrop to have had a new rocker, nor for Susan to have purchased a new bonnet. Susan indeed looked almost absolutely unaltered. She was a woman of the best wearing quality; she was hard and firm as ever, and if there were any plating about her, it was of the quadruple kind and would last.

If the reader knows Susan Clegg at all, he will surmise that she was talking. And he will be right. Susan was most emphatically talking. She had returned from the Sewing Society full to the brim, and Mrs. Lathrop was already enjoying the overflow. Mrs. Lathrop liked to rock and listen. She never went to the Sewing Society herself—she never went anywhere.

"We was talking about dreams," Susan was saying; "it's a very curious thing about dreams. Do you know, Mrs. Lathrop," wrinkling her brow and regarding her friend with that look of friendship which is not blind to any faults, "do you know, Mrs. Lathrop, they said down there that dreams always go by contraries. We was discussing it for a long time, and they ended up by making me believe in it. You see, it all began by my saying how I dreamed last night that Jathrop was back, and he was a cat and your cat, too, and he did something he wasn't let to, and you made one jump at him, and out of the window he went. Now that was a very strange dream for me to have dreamed, Mrs. Lathrop, and Mrs. Lupey, who's staying with Mrs. Macy to-day and maybe to-morrow, too, says she's sure it's a sign. She says if dreams go by contraries, mine ought to be a sign as Jathrop is coming back, for the contraries is all there: Jathrop wasn't a cat, and he never done nothing that he shouldn't—nor that he should, neither—and you never jump—I don't believe you've jumped in years, have you?"

"I—" began Mrs. Lathrop reminiscently.

"Oh, that time don't count," said Susan, "it was just my ball of yarn, even if it did look like a rat; I meant a jump when you meant it; you didn't mean that jump. Well, an' to go back to the dream and what was said about it and to tell you the rest of it, there wasn't any more of it, but there was plenty more said about it. All of the dream was that the cat went out of the window, and I woke up, but, oh, my, how we did talk! Gran'ma Mullins wanted to know in the first place how I knew that the cat was Jathrop. She was most interested in that, for she says she often dreams of animals, but it never struck her that they might be any one she knew. She dreamed she found a daddy-long-legs looking in her bureau drawer the other night, but she never gave it another thought. She'll be more careful after this, I guess. Well, then I begun to consider, and for the life of me I can't think how I knew that that cat was Jathrop. As I remember it was a very common looking cat, but being common looking wouldn't mean Jathrop. Jathrop was common looking, but not a common cat kind of common looking. It was a very strange dream, Mrs. Lathrop, the more I consider it, the more I can't see what give it to me. I finished up the doughnuts just before I went to bed, for I was afraid they'd mold in