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--"

"I know, but the cow never come of her own free will, 'n' it strikes
me 't Jathrop's the one to blame. I never was so done up in my life 's
I was when I hear this about you. You kin believe me or not jus' 's
you please, Mrs. Lathrop, but I was so nigh to struck dead 't I
stopped short with one leg on the station 'n' the other on the train.
It was Johnny 's dodged out o' the ticket-office to tell me the minute
the train stopped, 'n' I d'n' know but I'd be there yet--f'r I was
clean struck all in a heap--only a man jus' behind jammed me with a
case o' beer 't he was bringin' home. To think 's I see you goin' to
the barn jus' 's I was lookin' f'r a place to hide my keys afore
leavin', 'n' then to think 's them was your last legs 'n' you usin'
'em 's innocent 's a grasshopper on a May mornin'!--I tell you I was
so used up I thought some o' askin' to be druv up here, but Johnny
didn't have no time to give pertickilers 'ca