"Do you suppose she's really his wife?" asked Mrs. Macy, seating herself and looking eagerly in her friend's face.
"Oh, Susan," Mrs. Macy went on, her eyes becoming quite globular under the severe stress of her curiosity, "do you suppose anybody married 'em, or did he just buy her for beads?"
"I don't know," said Susan, rocking severely back and forth, "I don't know a _tall_. You must ask some one wiser than me what a white man does about a Chinese when he wants her to cook for him. You ought to have seen her in my kitchen, Mrs. Macy; she walked straight to my rack of pans and took down just whatever she fancied. I _never_ saw the beat! No, nor nobody else. She's learned how to be cool from Jathrop and the North Pole together, looks to me. I never see such ways as Jathrop has picked up. He never said a word walking up--nothing but 'Ah' once. I don't call 'Ah' once much of a conversation for the woman as rocked your cradle and might have married you, too--if she'd wanted to. For I could have married Jathrop Lathrop, Mrs. Macy; nobody but me will ever know what passed between us, but I could have married him. I won't say what prevented, but I can tell you it wasn't him. And he's lived to regret it, too. Just like the minister regrets it. When the minister speaks of the treasure that layeth up in heaven, he doesn't mean no chicken--he means me."
"I don't doubt but what he's sorry," said Mrs. Macy; "maybe he married a Chinese for fear any other kind would remind him of you."
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, 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?'"