jus’ have to take ’em as they come, because when it’s all for you to choose you want so much ’t like ‘s not I can’t be suited after all.  It’s goin’ to be pretty hard decidin’, ‘n’ when I’ve done decidin’ it’s goin’ to be pretty hard findin’ a baby that’s all ’t I’ve decided; ‘n’ then, if I find it,—­then comes the raisin’ of it, ‘n’ I espect that ‘ll be suthin’ jus’ awful.”

“How was you goin’ to find—­” Mrs. Lathrop asked.

“Well, I’ve got to go to town to look at winter coats, ‘n’ I thought ‘t when I’d found what I wanted I’d jus’ glance through two or three orphan asylums afore comin’ home.”

Mrs. Lathrop pinned the purple to the yellow and shut one eye so as to judge of the combination from the single standpoint of the other.  She seemed to be gradually regaining her normal state of abnormal calmness.

“I thought ’t your coat was pretty good,” she said mildly, as Susan altered her needles.  The stocking started violently.

“Pretty good!  It’s most new.  My heavens alive, Mrs. Lathrop, don’t you know ’s well ’s I do ’t I ain’t had my new coat but four years ‘n’ then only to church!”

“You said ‘t you was goin’ to get—­” Mrs. Lathrop remarked, unpinning the purple as she spoke and replacing it in the bag.

“Mrs. Lathrop! ‘f you don’t beat anythin’ ‘t I ever saw for puttin’ words ’t I never even dreamed of into other folks’s mouths!  ’S if I should ever think o’ buyin’ a new coat ‘n’ the price-tag not even dirty on the inside o’ mine yet!  I never said ‘t I was goin’ to buy a coat,—­I never thought o’ goin’ to buy a coat,—­what I did say was ’t I was goin’ to look at coats, an’ the reason ‘t I’m goin’ to look at coats is because I’m goin’ to cut over the sleeves o’ mine.  I thought all last winter ’t it was pretty queer for a woman ’s rich ’s I be to wear old-fashioned sleeves—­more particularly so where I c’n easy cut a new sleeve crossways out o’ the puffs o’ the old ones.  ‘N’ that’s why I want to look at coats, Mrs. Lathrop, for I ain’t in the habit o’ settin’ my shears in where I can’t see my way out.”

Mrs. Lathrop fingered a piece of rusty black silk and made no comment.

“When I get done lookin’ at coats, lookin’ ’t orphans ‘ll be jus’ a nice change.  If I see any ’t I think might suit I’ll take their numbers ‘n’ come home ‘n’ see about decidin’, ‘n’ if I don’t see any ‘t I like I’ll come home jus’ the same.”

The clock struck nine.  Mrs. Lathrop rose and gathered up her bag of pieces.

“I mus’ be goin’ home,” she said.

“I was thinkin’ that very same thing,” said Susan, rising also.  “It’s our thinkin’ so much the same’t keeps us friends, I guess.”

Mrs. Lathrop sought her shawl and departed.

* * * * *

It was about a week later that the trip to town took place.  The day was chosen to suit the opening of a most unprecedented Fire-Sale.  Miss Clegg thought that the latest styles in coat-sleeves were likely to bloom broadcast on so auspicious an occasion, and Mrs. Lathrop herself was sufficiently infected by the advertising in the papers to dare to intrust her friend with the whole of a two-dollar bill to be judiciously invested if bargains should really run as wildly rife as was predicted.