“But about the ba—­” said Mrs. Lathrop.

“Oh, the baby ’ll have to go.  I told you all along ’t it had to be one or t’ other an’ in the end it’s the lion as has come out on top.  I guess I was n’t cut out to be a mother like I was a daughter.  I know ’t I never wanted a baby for myself half like I ’ve wanted that lion for my dead ‘n’ gone father.  Do you know, Mrs. Lathrop, I do believe ‘t I had a persentiment the first time I ever see that lion.  Suthin’ sort o’ crep’ right up my back, ‘n’ I ‘m jus’ sure ’t folks ’ll come from miles roun’ to see it.  I guess it’s the Finger o’ Fate.  When you come to think o’ it, it ‘s all for the best jus’ the way ’t it ’s come out.  The baby ’d ‘a’ grown up an’ gone off somewhere, an’ the lion ’ll stay right where you put him, for he ’s so heavy that the monument man says we ‘ll have to drive piles all down aroun’ father.  Then, too, maybe I could n’t ‘a’ managed a boy an’ I can scour that lion all I want to.  ‘N’ I will scour him too,—­nobody need n’t suppose ’t I’ve paid three hunderd dollars f’r anythin’ to let it get mossy.  I’ve invited the monument man ‘n’ his wife to come ‘n’ visit me while he’s gettin’ the lion in place, ‘n’ he says he’s so pleased over me ‘n’ nobody else gettin’ it ‘t he’s goin’ to give me a paper sayin’ ’t when I die he’ll chop my date in f’r nothin’.  I tell you what, Mrs. Lathrop, I certainly am glad ’t I’ve got the sense to know when I’m well off, ‘n’ I cert’nly do feel that in this particular case I’m mighty lucky.  So all ’s well ’t ends well.”

Mrs. Lathrop nodded.

III

JATHROP LATHROP’S COW

Jathrop Lathrop was just the style and build of young man to be easily persuaded into taking a kicking cow in full payment of a good debt.  Jathrop having taken the cow, it naturally fell to the lot of his mother to milk her.  The reader can quickly divine what event formed the third of these easily to be foreseen developments of the most eventful day in the life of the cow’s new proprietor.  The kicking cow kicked Jathrop Lathrop’s mother, not out of any especial antipathy towards that most innocuous lady, but just because it was of a kicking nature and Mrs. Lathrop was temptingly kickable.  The sad part of the matter was that Mrs. Lathrop was not only kickable but breakable as well.  It followed that at twelve o’clock that noon Miss Clegg, returning from a hasty trip to the city, was greeted at the depot by the sad tidings, and it was not until various of the town folk had finished their versions of the disaster that she was at last allowed to hasten to the bedside of her dear friend, whom she found not only in great bodily distress but also already cast in plaster.

Miss Clegg’s attitude as she stood in the doorway was one of blended commiseration and disgust.

“Well, I never would ‘a’ believed it o’ Jathrop!” she burst forth at last.

“’T wa’n’t Jathrop,” Mrs. Lathrop protested feebly; “it was the—­”