Читать книгу Susan Clegg and Her Love Affairs - Warner Anne - Страница 4

It was not in reason to suppose that the return of Jathrop Lathrop should continue to occupy wholly the attention of the community. Each week – even each day – brought its fresh interests. Not the least exciting of the provocative elements was borne back from the metropolis to which 'Liza Em'ly, that hitherto negatively regarded olive branch of the ministerial family, had but recently emigrated. 'Liza Em'ly, it was whispered one day, had written a book.

The Sewing Society, at its next meeting, discussed it, as a matter of course; and Susan Clegg, equally as a matter of course, promptly reported the proceedings to her friend and neighbor, Mrs. Lathrop.

"Well," she began, sitting down with the heavy thump of one who is completely and utterly overcome, "I give up. It's beyond me. I was to the Sewing Society, and it's beyond them all, too. The idea of 'Liza Em'ly's writing a book! No one can see how she ever come to think as she could write a book. No one can see where she got any ideas to put in a book. I don't know what any one thought she would do when she set out for the city to earn her own living, but there wasn't a soul in town as expected her to do it, let alone writing a book, too. I can't see whatever gives any one the idea of earning their living by writing books. Books always seem so sort of unnecessary to me, anyway – I ain't read one myself in years. No one in this community ever does read, and that's what makes everybody so surprised over 'Liza Em'ly, after living among us so long and so steady, starting up all of a sudden and doing anything like this. And what makes it all the more surprising is she never said a word about it either – never wrote home to the family or told a living soul. And so you can maybe imagine the shock to the minister when he got word as his own flesh and blood daughter had not only written a book but got it all printed without consulting him. His wife says he was completely done up and could hardly speak for quite a little while, and later when the newspaper clippings begin to come, he had to go to bed and have a salt-water cloth over his eyes. I tell you, Mrs. Lathrop, the minister is a very sensitive nature; it's no light thing to a sensitive nature to get a shock like a daughter's writing a book."