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If you + don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are + payable to "Project Gutenberg Association / Illinois + Benedictine College" within the 60 days following each + date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) + your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. + +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, +scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty +free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution +you can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg +Association / Illinois Benedictine College". + +*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +Scanned with OmniPage Professional OCR software +donated by Caere Corporation, 1-800-535-7226. +Contact Mike Lough <Mikel@caere.com> + +WHERE THERE'S A WILL + +By + +MARY ROBERTS RINEHART + + + +CONTENTS +CHAPTER +I I HAVE A WARNING +II MISS PATTY ARRIVES +III A WILL +IV AND A WAY +V WANTED--AN OWNER +VI THE CONSPIRACY +VII MR. PIERCE ACQUIRES A WIFE +VII AND MR. MOODY INDIGESTION +IX DOLLY, HOW COULD YOU +X ANOTHER COMPLICATION +XI MISS PATTY'S PRINCE +XII WE GET A DOCTOR +XIII THE PRINCE--PRINCIPALLY +XIV PIERCE DISAPPROVES +XV THE PRINCE, WITH APOLOGIES +XVI STOP, THIEF! +XVII A BUNCH OF LETTERS +XVIII MISS COBB'S BURGLAR +XIX NO MARRIAGE IN HEAVEN +XX EVERY DOG HAS HIS DAY +XXI THE MUTINY +XXII HOME TO ROOST +XXIII BACK TO NATURE +XIV LIKE DUCKS TO WATER +XXV THE FIRST FRUITS +XXVI OVER THE FENCE IS OUT +XXVII A CUPBOARD FULL OF RYE +XXVIII LOVE, LOVE, LOVE +XXIX A BIG NIGHT TO-NIGHT +XXX LET GOOD DIGESTION + + + +WHERE THERE'S A WILL + + + + + +CHAPTER I + +I HAVE A WARNING + +When it was all over Mr. Sam came out to the spring-house to say +good-by to me before he and Mrs. Sam left. I hated to see him +go, after all we had been through together, and I suppose he saw +it in my face, for he came over close and stood looking down at +me, and smiling. "You saved us, Minnie," he said, "and I needn't +tell you we're grateful; but do you know what I think?" he asked, +pointing his long forefinger at me. "I think you've enjoyed it +even when you were suffering most. Red-haired women are born to +intrigue, as the sparks fly upward." + +"Enjoyed it!" I snapped. "I'm an old woman before my time, Mr. +Sam. What with trailing back and forward through the snow +to the shelter-house, and not getting to bed at all some nights, +and my heart going by fits and starts, as you may say, and half +the time my spinal marrow fairly chilled--not to mention putting +on my overshoes every morning from force of habit and having to +take them off again, I'm about all in." + +"It's been the making of you, Minnie," he said, eying me, with +his hands in his pockets. "Look at your cheeks! Look at your +disposition! I don't believe you'd stab anybody in the back +now!" + +(Which was a joke, of course; I never stabbed anybody in the +back.) + +He sauntered over and dropped a quarter into the slot-machine by +the door, but the thing was frozen up and refused to work. I've +seen the time when Mr. Sam would have kicked it, but he merely +looked at it and then at me. + +"Turned virtuous, like everything else around the place. Not +that I don't approve of virtue, Minnie, but I haven't got used to +putting my foot on the brass rail of the bar and ordering a nut +sundae. Hook the money out with a hairpin, Minnie, and buy some +shredded wheat in remembrance of me." + +He opened the door and a blast of February wind rattled the +window-frames. Mr. Sam threw out his chest under his sweater and +waved me another good-by. + +"Well, I'm off, Minnie," he said. "Take care of yourself and +don't sit too tight on the job; learn to rise a bit in the +saddle." + +"Good-by, Mr. Sam!" I called, putting down Miss Patty's doily and +following him to the door; "good-by; better have something before +you start to keep you warm." + +He turned at the corner of the path and grinned back at me. + +"All right," he called. "I'll go down to the bar and get a +lettuce sandwich!" + +Then he was gone, and happy as I was, I knew I would miss him +terribly. I got a wire hairpin and went over to the slot- +machine, but when I had finally dug out the money I could hardly +see it for tears. + + + + +It began when the old doctor died. I suppose you have heard of +Hope Sanatorium and the mineral spring that made it famous. +Perhaps you have seen the blotter we got out, with a flash-light +interior of the spring-house on it, and me handing the old +doctor a glass of mineral water, and wearing the embroidered +linen waist that Miss Patty Jennings gave me that winter. The +blotters were a great success. Below the picture it said, "Yours +for health," and in the body of the blotter, in red lettering, +"Your system absorbs the health-giving drugs in Hope Springs +water as this blotter soaks up ink." + +The "Yours for health" was my idea. + +I have been spring-house girl at Hope Springs Sanatorium for +fourteen years. My father had the position before me, but he +took rheumatism, and as the old doctor said, it was bad business +policy to spend thousands of dollars in advertising that Hope +Springs water cured rheumatism, and then have father creaking +like a rusty hinge every time he bent over to fill a glass with +it. + +Father gave me one piece of advice the day he turned the spring- +house over to me. + +"It's a difficult situation, my girl," he said. "Lots of people +think it's simply a matter of filling a glass with water and +handing it over the railing. Why, I tell you a barkeeper's a +high-priced man mostly, and his job's a snap to this. I'd like +to know how a barkeeper would make out if his customers came +back only once a year and he had to remember whether they wanted +their drinks cold or hot or `chill off'. And another thing: if a +chap comes in with a tale of woe, does the barkeeper have to ask +him what he's doing for it, and listen while he tells how much +weight he lost in a blanket sweat? No, sir; he pushes him a +bottle and lets it go at that." + +Father passed away the following winter. He'd been a little bit +delirious, and his last words were: "Yes, sir; hot, with a pinch +of salt, sir?" Poor father! The spring had been his career, you +may say, and I like to think that perhaps even now he is sitting +by some everlasting spring measuring out water with a golden +goblet instead of the old tin dipper. I said that to Mr. Sam +once, and he said he felt quite sure that I was right, and that +where father was the water would be appreciated. He had heard of +father. + +Well, for the first year or so I nearly went crazy. Then I found +things were coming my way. I've got the kind of mind that never +forgets a name or face and can combine them properly, which isn't +common. And when folks came back I could call them at once. It +would do your heart good to see some politician, coming up to +rest his stomach from the free bar in the state house at the +capital, enter the spring-house where everybody is playing cards +and drinking water and not caring a rap whether he's the man that +cleans the windows or the secretary of the navy. If he's been +there before, in sixty seconds I have his name on my tongue and a +glass of water in his hand, and have asked him about the +rheumatism in his right knee and how the children are. And in +ten minutes he's sitting in a bridge game and trotting to the +spring to have his glass refilled during his dummy hand, as if +he'd grown up in the place. The old doctor used to say my memory +was an asset to the sanatorium. + +He depended on me a good bit--the old doctor did--and that winter +he was pretty feeble. (He was only seventy, but he'd got in the +habit of making it eighty to show that the mineral water kept him +young. Finally he got to BEING eighty, from thinking it, and +he died of senility in the end.) + +He was in the habit of coming to the spring-house every day to +get his morning glass of water and read the papers. For a good +many years it had been his custom to sit there, in the winter by +the wood fire and in the summer just inside the open door, and +to read off the headings aloud while I cleaned around the spring +and polished glasses. + +"I see the president is going fishing, Minnie," he'd say, or +"Airbrake is up to 133; I wish I'd bought it that time I dreamed +about it. It was you who persuaded me not to, Minnie." + +And all that winter, with the papers full of rumors that Miss +Patty Jennings was going to marry a prince, we'd followed it by +the spring-house fire, the old doctor and I, getting angry at the +Austrian emperor for opposing it when we knew how much too good +Miss Patty was for any foreigner, and then getting nervous and +fussed when we read that the prince's mother was in favor of the +match and it might go through. Miss Patty and her father came +every winter to Hope Springs and I couldn't have been more +anxious about it if she had been my own sister. + +Well, as I say, it all began the very day the old doctor died. +He stamped out to the spring-house with the morning paper about +nine o'clock, and the wedding seemed to be all off. The paper +said the emperor had definitely refused his consent and had +sent the prince, who was his cousin, for a Japanese cruise, +while the Jennings family was going to Mexico in their private +car. The old doctor was indignant, and I remember how he tramped +up and down the spring-house, muttering that the girl had had a +lucky escape, and what did the emperor expect if beauty and youth +and wealth weren't enough. But he calmed down, and soon he was +reading that the papers were predicting an early spring, and he +said we'd better begin to increase our sulphur percentage in the +water. + +I hadn't noticed anything strange in his manner, although we'd +all noticed how feeble he was growing, but when he got up to go +back to the sanatorium and I reached him his cane, it seemed to +me he avoided looking at me. He went to the door and then turned +and spoke to me over his shoulder. + +"By the way," he remarked, "Mr. Richard will be along in a day or +so, Minnie. You'd better break it to Mrs. Wiggins." + +Since the summer before we'd had to break Mr. Dick's coming to +Mrs. Wiggins the housekeeper, owing to his finding her false +front where it had blown out of a window, having been hung up to +dry, and his wearing it to luncheon as whiskers. Mr. Dick was +the old doctor's grandson. + +"Humph!" I said, and he turned around and looked square at me. + +"He's a good boy at heart, Minnie," he said. "We've had our +troubles with him, you and I, but everything has been quiet +lately." + +When I didn't say anything he looked discouraged, but he had a +fine way of keeping on until he gained his point, had the old +doctor. + +"It HAS been quiet, hasn't it?" he demanded. + +"I don't know," I said; "I have been deaf since the last +explosion!" And I went down the steps to the spring. I heard +the tap of his cane as he came across the floor, and I knew he +was angry. + +"Confound you, Minnie," he exclaimed, "if I could get along +without you I'd discharge you this minute." + +"And if I paid any attention to your discharging me I'd have been +gone a dozen times in the last year," I retorted. "I'm not +objecting to Mr. Dick coming here, am I? Only don't expect me to +burst into song about it. Shut the door behind you when you go +out." + +But he didn't go at once. He stood watching me polish glasses +and get the card-tables ready, and I knew he still had something +on his mind. + +"Minnie," he said at last, "you're a shrewd young woman--maybe +more head than heart, but that's well enough. And with your +temper under control, you're a CAPABLE young woman." + +"What has Mr. Dick been up to now?" I asked, growing suspicious. + +"Nothing. But I'm an old man, Minnie, a very old man." + +"Stuff and nonsense," I exclaimed, alarmed. "You're only +seventy. That's what comes of saying in the advertising that you +are eighty--to show what the springs have done for you. It's +enough to make a man die of senility to have ten years tacked to +his age." + +"And if," he went on, "if anything happens to me, Minnie, I'm +counting on you to do what you can for the old place. You've +been here a good many years, Minnie." + +"Fourteen years I have been ladling out water at this spring," I +said, trying to keep my lips from trembling. "I wouldn't be at +home any place else, unless it would be in an aquarium. But +don't ask me to stay here and help Mr. Dick sell the old place +for a summer hotel. For that's what he'll do." + +"He won't sell it," declared the old doctor grimly. "All I want +is for you to promise to stay." + +"Oh, I'll stay," I said. "I won't promise to be agreeable, but +I'll stay. Somebody'll have to look after the spring; I reckon +Mr. Dick thinks it comes out of the earth just as we sell it, +with the whole pharmacopoeia in it." + +Well, it made the old doctor happier, and I'm not sorry I +promised, but I've got a joint on my right foot that throbs when +it is going to rain or I am going to have bad luck, and it gave a +jump then. I might have known there was trouble ahead. + + + + + + +CHAPTER II + +MISS PATTY ARRIVES + +It was pretty quiet in the spring-house that day after the old +doctor left. It had started to snow and only the regulars came +out. What with the old doctor talking about dying, and Miss +Patty Jennings gone to Mexico, when I'd been looking forward to +her and her cantankerous old father coming to Hope Springs for +February, as they mostly did, I was depressed all day. I got to +the point where Mr. Moody feeding nickels into the slot-machine +with one hand and eating zwieback with the other made me +nervous. After a while he went to sleep over it, and when he had +slipped a nickel in his mouth and tried to put the zwieback in +the machine he muttered something and went up to the house. + +I was glad to be alone. I drew a chair in front of the fire and +wondered what I would do if the old doctor died, and what a fool +I'd been not to be a school-teacher, which is what I studied for. + +I was thinking to myself bitterly that all that my +experience in the spring fitted me for was to be a mermaid, when +I heard something running down the path, and it turned out to be +Tillie, the diet cook. + +She slammed the door behind her and threw the Finleyville evening +paper at me. + +"There!" she said, "I've won a cake of toilet soap from Bath- +house Mike. The emperor's consented." + +"Nonsense!" I snapped, and snatched the paper. Tillie was right; +the emperor HAD! I sat down and read it through, and there +was Miss Patty's picture in an oval and the prince's in another, +with a turned-up mustache and his hand on the handle of his +sword, and between them both was the Austrian emperor. Tillie +came and looked over my shoulder. + +"I'm not keen on the mustache," she said, "but the sword's +beautiful--and, oh, Minnie, isn't he aristocratic? Look at his +nose!" + +But I'm not one to make up my mind in a hurry, and I'd heard +enough talk about foreign marriages in the years I'd been dipping +out mineral water to make me a skeptic, so to speak. + +"I'm not so sure," I said slowly. "You can't tell anything by +that kind of a picture. If he was even standing beside a +chair I could get a line on him. He may be only four feet high." + +"Then Miss Jennings wouldn't love him," declared Tillie. "How do +you reckon he makes his mustache point up like that?" + +"What's love got to do with it?" I demanded. "Don't be a fool, +Tillie. It takes more than two people's pictures in a newspaper +with a red heart around them and an overweight cupid above to +make a love-match. Love's a word that's used to cover a good +many sins and to excuse them all." + +"She isn't that kind," said Tillie. "She's--she's as sweet as +she's beautiful, and you're as excited as I am, Minnie Waters, +and if you're not, what have you got the drinking glass she used +last winter put on the top shelf out of reach for?" She went to +the door and slammed it open. "Thank heaven I'm not a dried-up +old maid," she called back over her shoulder, "and when you're +through hugging that paper you can send it up to the house." + +Well, I sat there and thought it over, Miss Patty, or Miss +Patricia, being, so to speak, a friend of mine. They'd come to +the Springs every winter for years. Many a time she'd slipped +away from her governess and come down to the spring-house for +a chat with me, and we'd make pop-corn together by my open fire, +and talk about love and clothes, and even the tariff, Miss Patty +being for protection, which was natural, seeing that was the way +her father made his money, and I for free trade, especially in +the winter when my tips fall off considerable. + +And when she was younger she would sit back from the fire, with +the corn-popper on her lap and her cheeks as red as cranberries, +and say: "I DON'T know why I tell you all these things, +Minnie, but Aunt Honoria's funny, and I can't talk to Dorothy; +she's too young, you know. Well, HE said--" only every winter +it was a different "he." + +In my wash-stand drawer I'd kept all the clippings about her +coming out and the winter she spent in Washington and was +supposed to be engaged to the president's son, and the magazine +article that told how Mr. Jennings had got his money by robbing +widows and orphans, and showed the little frame house where Miss +Patty was born--as if she's had anything to do with it. And so +now I was cutting out the picture of her and the prince and the +article underneath which told how many castles she'd have, +and I don't mind saying I was sniffling a little bit, for I +couldn't get used to the idea. And suddenly the door closed +softly and there was a rustle behind me. When I turned it was +Miss Patty herself. She saw the clipping immediately, and +stopped just inside the door. + +"YOU, TOO," she said. "And we've come all this distance to +get away from just that." + +"Well, I shan't talk about it," I replied, not holding out my +hand, for with her, so to speak, next door to being a princess-- +but she leaned right over and kissed me. I could hardly believe +it. + +"Why won't you talk about it?" she insisted, catching me by the +shoulders and holding me off. "Minnie, your eyes are as red as +your hair!" + +"I don't approve of it," I said. "You might as well know it now +as later, Miss Patty. I don't believe in mixed marriages. I had +a cousin that married a Jew, and what with him making the +children promise to be good on the Talmud and her trying to raise +them with the Bible, the poor things is that mixed up that it's +pitiful." + +She got a little red at that, but she sat down and took up the +clipping. + +"He's much better looking than that, Minnie," she said soberly, +"and he's a good Catholic. But if that's the way you feel we'll +not talk about it. I've had enough trouble at home as it is." + +"I guess from that your father isn't crazy about it," I remarked, +getting her a glass of spring water. The papers had been full of +how Mr. Jennings had forbidden the prince the house when he had +been in America the summer before. + +"Certainly he's crazy about it--almost insane!" she said, and +smiled at me in her old way over the top of the glass. Then she +put down the glass and came over to me. "Minnie, Minnie," she +said, "if you only knew how I've wanted to get away from the +newspapers and the gossips and come to this smelly little spring- +house and talk things over with a red-haired, sharp-tongued, +mean-dispositioned spring-house girl--!" + +And with that I began to blubber, and she came into my arms like +a baby. + +"You're all I've got," I declared, over and over, "and you're +going to live in a country where they harness women with dogs, +and you'll never hear an English word from morning to night." + +"Stuff!" She gave me a little shake. "He speaks as good English +as I do. And now we're going to stop talking about him--you're +worse than the newspapers." She took off her things and going +into my closet began to rummage for the pop-corn. "Oh, how glad +I am to get away," she sang out to me. "We're supposed to have +gone to Mexico; even Dorothy doesn't know. Where's the pop- +corner or the corn-popper or whatever you call it?" + +She was as happy to have escaped the reporters and the people she +knew as a child, and she sat down on the floor in front of the +fire and began to shell the corn into the popper, as if she'd +done it only the day before. + +"I guess you're safe enough here," I said. "It's always slack in +January--only a few chronics and the Saturday-to-Monday husbands, +except a drummer now and then who drives up from Finleyville. +It's too early for drooping society buds, and the chronic livers +don't get around until late March, after the banquet season +closes. It will be pretty quiet for a while." + +And at that minute the door was flung open, and Bath-house Mike +staggered in. + +"The old doctor!" he gasped. "He's dead, Miss Minnie--died just +now in the hot room in the bathhouse! One minute he was givin' +me the divil for something or other, and the next-- I thought he +was asleep." + +Something that had been heavy in my breast all afternoon suddenly +seemed to burst and made me feel faint all over. But I didn't +lose my head. + +"Does anybody know yet?" I asked quickly. He shook his head. + +"Then he didn't die in the bath-house, Mike," I said firmly. "He +died in his bed, and you know it. If it gets out that he died in +the hot room I'll have the coroner on you." + +Miss Patty was standing by the railing of the spring. I got my +shawl and started out after Mike, and she followed. + +"If the guests ever get hold of this they'll stampede. Start any +excitement in a sanatorium," I said, "and one and all they'll dip +their thermometers in hot water and swear they've got fever!" + +And we hurried to the house together. + + + + + +CHAPTER III + +A WILL + +Well, we got the poor old doctor moved back to his room, and had +one of the chambermaids find him there, and I wired to Mrs. Van +Alstyne, who was Mr. Dicky Carter's sister, and who was on her +honeymoon in South Carolina. The Van Alstynes came back at once, +in very bad tempers, and we had the funeral from the preacher's +house in Finleyville so as not to harrow up the sanatorium people +any more than necessary. Even as it was a few left, but about +twenty of the chronics stayed, and it looked as if we might be +able to keep going. + +Miss Patty sent to town for a black veil for me, and even went to +the funeral. It helped to take my mind off my troubles to think +who it was that was holding my hand and comforting me, and when, +toward the end of the service, she got out her handkerchief and +wiped her eyes I was almost overcome, she being, so to +speak, in the very shadow of a throne. + +After it was all over the relatives gathered in the sun parlor of +the sanatorium to hear the will--Mr. Van Alstyne and his wife and +about twenty more who had come up from the city for the funeral +and stayed over--on the house. + +Well, the old doctor left me the buttons for his full dress +waistcoat and his favorite copy of Gray's Anatomy. I couldn't +exactly set up housekeeping with my share of the estate, but when +the lawyer read that part of the will aloud and a grin went +around the room I flounced out of my chair. + +"Maybe you think I'm disappointed," I said, looking hard at the +family, who weren't making any particular pretense at grief, and +at the house people standing around the door. "Maybe you think +it's funny to see an unmarried woman get a set of waistcoat +buttons and a medical book. Well, that set of buttons was the +set he bought in London on his wedding trip, and the book's the +one he read himself to sleep with every night for twenty years. +I'm proud to get them." + +Mr. Van Alstyne touched me on the arm. + +"Everybody knows how loyal you've been, Minnie," he assured me. +"Now sit down like a good girl and listen to the rest of the +will." + +"While I'm up I might as well get something else off my mind," I +said. "I know what's in that will, but I hadn't anything to do +with it, Mr. Van Alstyne. He took advantage of my being laid up +with influenza last spring." + +They thought that was funny, but a few minutes later they weren't +so cheerful. You see the sanatorium was a mighty fine piece of +property, with a deer park and golf links. We'd had plenty of +offers to sell it for a summer hotel, but we'd both been dead +against it. That was one of the reasons for the will. + +The whole estate was left to Dicky Carter, who hadn't been able +to come, owing to his being laid up with an attack of mumps. The +family sat up and nodded at one another, or held up its hands, +but when they heard there was a condition they breathed +easier. + +Beginning with one week after the reading of the will--and not a +day later--Mr. Dick was to take charge of the sanatorium and to +stay there for two months without a day off. If at the end +of that time the place was being successfully conducted and could +show that it hadn't lost money, the entire property became his +for keeps. If he failed it was to be sold and the money given to +charity. + +You would have to know Richard Carter to understand the +excitement the will caused. Most of us, I reckon, like the sort +of person we've never dared to be ourselves. The old doctor had +gone to bed at ten o'clock all his life and got up at seven, and +so he had a sneaking fondness for the one particular grandson who +often didn't go to bed at all. Twice to my knowledge when he was +in his teens did Dicky Carter run away from school, and twice his +grandfather kept him for a week hidden in the shelter-house on +the golf links. Naturally when Mr. Van Alstyne and I had to hide +him again, which is further on in the story, he went to the old +shelter-house like a dog to its kennel, only this time--but +that's ahead, too. + +Well, the family went back to town in a buzz of indignation, and +I carried my waistcoat buttons and my Anatomy out to the +spring-house and had a good cry. There was a man named Thoburn +who was crazy for the property as a summer hotel, and every +time I shut my eyes I could see "Thoburn House" over the veranda +and children sailing paper boats in the mineral spring. + +Sure enough, the next afternoon Mr. Thoburn drove out from +Finleyville with a suit case, and before he'd taken off his +overcoat he came out to the spring-house. + +"Hello, Minnie," he exclaimed. "Does the old man's ghost come +back to dope the spring, or do you do it?" + +"I don't know what you are talking about, Mr. Thoburn," I +retorted sharply. "If you don't know that this spring has its +origin in--" + +"In Schmidt's drug store down in Finleyville!" he finished for +me. "Oh, I know all about that spring, Minnie! Don't forget +that my father's cows used to drink that water and liked it. I +leave it to you," he said, sniffing, "if a self-respecting cow +wouldn't die of thirst before she drank that stuff as it is now." + +I'd been filling him a glass--it being a matter of habit with +me--and he took it to the window and held it to the light. + +"You're getting careless, Minnie," he said, squinting at it. +"Some of those drugs ought to be dissolved first in hot water. +There's a lump of lithia there that has Schmidt's pharmacy label +on it." + +"Where?" I demanded, and started for it. He laughed at that, and +putting the glass down, he came over and stood smiling at me. + +"As ingenuous as a child," he said in his mocking way, "a nice, +little red-haired child! Minnie, how old is this young Carter?" + +"Twenty-three." + +"An--er--earnest youth? Willing to buckle down to work and make +the old place go? Ready to pat the old ladies on the shoulder +and squeeze the young ones' hands?" + +"He's young," I said, "but if you're counting on his being a +fool--" + +"Not at all," he broke in hastily. "If he hasn't too much +character he'll probably succeed. I hope he isn't a fool. If he +isn't, oh, friend Minnie, he'll stand the atmosphere of this +Garden of Souls for about a week, and then he'll kill some of +them and escape. Where is he now?" + +"He's been sick," I said. "Mumps!" + +"Mumps! Oh, my aunt!" he exclaimed, and fell to laughing. He +was still laughing when he got to the door. + +"Mumps!" he repeated, with his hand on the knob. "Minnie, the +old place will be under the hammer in three weeks, and if you +know what's good for you, you'll sign in under the new management +while there's a vacancy. You've been the whole show here for so +long that it will be hard for you to line up in the back row of +the chorus." + +"If I were you," I said, looking him straight in the eye, "I +wouldn't pick out any new carpets yet, Mr. Thoburn. I promised +the old doctor I'd help Mr. Dick, and I will." + +"So you're actually going to fight it out," he said, grinning. +"Well, the odds are in your favor. You are two to my one." + +"I think it's pretty even," I retorted. "We will be hindered, so +to speak, by having certain principles of honor and honesty. You +have no handicap." + +He tried to think of a retort, and not finding one he slammed out +of the spring-house in a rage. + +Mr. Van Alstyne and his wife came in that same day, just before +dinner, and we played three-handed bridge for half an hour. +As I've said, they'd been on their honeymoon, and they were both +sulky at having to stay at the Springs. It was particularly hard +on Mrs. Van Alstyne, because, with seven trunks of trousseau with +her, she had to put on black. But she used to shut herself up in +her room in the evenings and deck out for Mr. Sam in her best +things. We found it out one evening when Mrs. Biggs set fire to +her bureau cover with her alcohol curling-iron heater, and Mrs. +Sam, who had been going around in a black crepe dress all day, +rushed out in pink satin with crystal trimming, and slippers with +cut-glass heels. + +After the first rubber Mrs. Van Alstyne threw her cards on the +floor and said another day like this would finish her. + +"Surely Dick is able to come now," she said, like a peevish +child. "Didn't he say the swelling was all gone?" + +"Do you expect me to pick up those cards?" Mr. Sam asked angrily, +looking at her. + +Mrs. Sam yawned and looked up at him. + +"Of course I do," she answered. "If it wasn't for you I'd not +have stayed a moment after the funeral. Isn't it bad enough +to have seven trunks full of clothes I've never worn, and to have +to put on poky old black, without keeping me here in this old +ladies' home?" + +Mr. Sam looked at the cards and then at her. + +"I'm not going to pick them up," he declared. "And as to our +staying here, don't you realize that if we don't your precious +brother will never show up here at all, or stay if he does come? +And don't you also realize that this is probably the only chance +he'll ever have in the world to become financially independent of +us?" + +"You needn't be brutal," she said sharply. "And it isn't so bad +for you here as it is for me. You spend every waking minute +admiring Miss Jennings, while I--there isn't a man in the place +who'll talk anything but his joints or his stomach." + +She got up and went to the window, and Mr. Sam followed her. +Nobody pays any attention to me in the spring-house; I'm a part +of it, like the brass rail around the spring, or the clock. + +"I'm not admiring Miss Jennings," he corrected, "I'm +sympathizing, dear. She looks too nice a girl to have been stung +by the title bee, that's all." + +She turned her back to him, but he pretended to tuck the hair at +the back of her neck up under her comb, and she let him do it. +As I stooped to gather up the cards he kissed the tip of her ear. + +"Listen," he said, "there's a scream of a play down at +Finleyville to-night called Sweet Peas. Senator Biggs and the +bishop went down last night, and they say it's the worst in +twenty years. Put on a black veil and let's slip away and see +it." + +I think she agreed to do it, but that night after dinner, Amanda +King, who has charge of the news stand, told me the sheriff had +closed the opera-house and that the leading woman was sick at the +hotel. + +"They say she looked funny last night," Amanda finished, "and I +guess she's got the mumps." + +Mumps! + +My joint gave a throb at that minute. + + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +AND A WAY + +Mr. Sam wasn't taking any chances, for the next day he went to +the city himself to bring Mr. Dick up. Everything was quiet that +day and the day after, except that on the second day I had a +difference of opinion with the house doctor and he left. + +The story of the will had got out, of course, and the guests were +waiting to see Mr. Dick come and take charge. I got a good bit +of gossip from Miss Cobb, who had had her hair cut short after a +fever and used to come out early in the morning and curl it all +over her head, heating the curler on the fire log. I never smell +burnt hair that I don't think of Miss Cobb trying to do the back +of her neck. She was one of our regulars, and every winter for +ten years she'd read me the letters she had got from an insurance +agent who'd run away with a married woman the day before +the wedding. She kept them in a bundle, tied with lavender +ribbon. + +It was on the third day, I think, that Miss Cobb told me that +Miss Patty and her father had had a quarrel the day before. She +got it from one of the chambermaids. Mr. Jennings was a liver +case and not pleasant at any time, but he had been worse than +usual. Annie, the chambermaid, told Miss Cobb that the trouble +was about settlements, and that the more Miss Patty tried to tell +him it was the European custom the worse he got. Miss Patty +hadn't come down to breakfast that day, and Mr. Moody and Senator +Biggs made a wager in the Turkish bath--according to Miss Cobb-- +Mr. Moody betting the wedding wouldn't come off at all. + +"Of course," Miss Cobb said, wetting her finger and trying the +iron to see if it was hot, "of course, Minnie, they're not +married yet, and if Father Jennings gets ugly and makes any sort +of scandal it's all off. A scandal just now would be fatal. +These royalties are very touchy about other people's +reputations." + +Well, I heard that often enough in the next few days. + +Mr. Sam hadn't come back by the morning of the sixth day, but he +wired his wife the day before that Mr. Dick was on the way. But +we met every train with a sleigh, and he didn't come. I was +uneasy, knowing Mr. Dick, and Mrs. Sam was worried, too. + +By that time everybody was waiting and watching, and on the early +train on the sixth day came the lawyer, a Mr. Stitt. Mr. Thoburn +was going around with a sort of greasy smile, and if I could have +poisoned him safely I'd have done it. + +It had been snowing hard for a day or so, and at eleven o'clock +that day I saw Miss Cobb and Mrs. Biggs coming down the path to +the spring-house, Mrs. Biggs with her crocheting-bag hanging to +the handle of her umbrella. I opened the door, but they wouldn't +come in. + +"We won't track up your clean floor, Minnie," Mrs. Biggs said-- +she was a little woman, almost fifty, who'd gone through life +convinced she'd only lived so long by the care she took of +herself--"but I thought I'd better come and speak to you. Please +don't irritate Mr. Biggs to-day. He's been reading that article +of Upton Sinclair's about fasting, and hasn't had a bite to eat +since noon yesterday." + +I noticed then that she looked pale. She was a nervous creature, +although she could drink more spring water than any human being I +ever saw, except one man, and he was a German. + +Well, I promised to be careful. I've seen them fast before, and +when a fat man starts to live on his own fat, like a bear, he +gets about the same disposition. + +Mrs. Biggs started back, but Miss Cobb waited a moment at the +foot of the steps. + +"Mr. Van Alstyne is back," she said, "but he came alone." + +"Alone!" I repeated, staring at her in a sort of daze. + +"Alone," she said solemnly, "and I heard him ask for Mr. Carter. +It seems he started for here yesterday." + +But I'd had time to get myself in hand, and if I had a chill up +my spine she never knew it. As she started after Mrs. Biggs I +saw Mr. Sam hurrying down the path toward the spring-house, and I +knew my joint hadn't throbbed for nothing. + +Mr. Sam came in and slammed the door behind him. + +"What's this about Mr. Dick not being here?" he shouted. + +"Well, he isn't. That's all there is to it, Mr. Van Alstyne," I +said calmly. I am always calm when other people get excited. +For that reason some people think my red hair is a false alarm, +but they soon find out. + +"But he MUST be here," said Mr. Van Alstyne. "I put him on +the train myself yesterday, and waited until it started to be +sure he was off." + +"The only way to get Mr. Richard anywhere you want him to go," I +said dryly, "is to have him nailed in a crate and labeled." + +"Damned young scamp!" said Mr. Van Alstyne, although I have a +sign in the spring-house, "Profanity not allowed." + +"EXACTLY what was he doing when you last laid eyes on him?" I +asked. + +"He was on the train--" + +"Was he alone?" + +"Yes." + +"Sitting?" + +"No, standing. What the deuce, Minnie--" + +"Waving out the window to you?" + +"Of course not!" exclaimed Mr. Van Alstyne testily. "He was +raising the window for a girl in the next seat." + +"Precisely!" I said. "Would you know the girl well enough to +trace her?" + +"That's ridiculous, you know," he said trying to be polite. "Out +of a thousand and one things that may have detained him--" + +"Only one thing ever detains Mr. Dick, and that always detains +him," I said solemnly. "That's a girl. You're a newcomer in the +family, Mr. Van Alstyne; you don't remember the time he went down +here to the station to see his Aunt Agnes off to the city, and we +found him three weeks later in Oklahoma trying to marry a widow +with five children." + +Mr. Van Alstyne dropped into a chair, and through force of habit +I gave him a glass of spring water. + +"This was a pretty girl, too," he said dismally. + +I sat down on the other side of the fireplace, and it seemed to +me that father's crayon enlargement over the mantel shook its +head at me. + +After a minute Mr. Van Alstyne drank the water and got up. + +"I'll have to tell my wife," he said. "Who's running the place, +anyhow? You?" + +"Not--exactly," I explained, "but, of course, when anything comes +up they consult me. The housekeeper is a fool, and now that the +house doctor's gone--" + +"Gone! Who's looking after the patients?" + +"Well, most of them have been here before," I explained, "and I +know their treatment--the kind of baths and all that." + +"Oh, YOU know the treatment!" he said, eying me. "And why did +the house doctor go?" + +"He ordered Mr. Moody to take his spring water hot. Mr. Moody's +spring water has been ordered cold for eleven years, and I +refused to change. It was between the doctor and me, Mr. Van +Alstyne." + +"Oh, of course," he said, "if it was a matter of principle--" He +stopped, and then something seemed to strike him. "I say," he +said; "about the doctor--that's all right, you know; lots of +doctors and all that. But for heaven's sake, Minnie, don't +discharge the cook." + +Now that was queer, for it had been running in my head all +morning that in the slack season it would be cheaper to get a +good woman instead of the chef and let Tillie, the diet cook, +make the pastry + +Mr. Sam picked up his hat and looked at his watch. + +"Eleven thirty," he said, "and no sign of that puppy yet. I +guess it's up to the police." + +"If there was only something to do," I said, with a lump in my +throat, "but to have to sit and do nothing while the old place +dies it's--it's awful, Mr. Van Alstyne." + +"We're not dead yet," he replied from the door, "and maybe we'll +need you before the day's over. If anybody can sail the old bark +to shore, you can do it, Minnie. You've been steering it for +years. The old doctor was no navigator, and you and I know it." + +It was blowing a blizzard by that time, and Miss Patty was the +only one who came out to the spring-house until after three +o'clock. She shook the snow off her furs and stood by the fire, +looking at me and not saying anything for fully a minute. + +"Well," she said finally, "aren't you ashamed of yourself?" + +"Why?" I asked, and swallowed hard. + +"To be in all this trouble and not let me know. I've just this +minute heard about it. Can't we get the police?" + +"Mr. Van Alstyne is trying," I said, "but I don't hope much. +Like as not Mr. Dick will turn up tomorrow and say his calendar +was a day slow." + +I gave her a glass of water, and I noticed when she took it how +pale she was. But she held it up and smiled over it at me. + +"Here's to everything turning out better than we expect!" she +said, and made a face as she drank the water. I thought that she +was thinking of her own troubles as well as mine, for she put +down the glass and stood looking at her engagement ring, a square +red ruby in an old-fashioned setting. It was a very large ruby, +but I've seen showier rings. + +"There isn't anything wrong, Miss Patty, is there?" I asked, and +she dropped her hand and looked at me. + +"Oh, no," she said. "That is, nothing much, Minnie. Father is-- +I think he's rather ridiculous about some things, but I dare say +he'll come around. I don't mind his fussing with me, but--if it +should get in the papers, Minnie! A breath of unpleasant +notoriety now would be fatal!" + +"I don't see why," I said sharply. "The royal families of Europe +have a good bit of unpleasant notoriety themselves occasionally. +I should think they'd fall over themselves to get some good red +American blood. Blue blood's bad blood; you can ask any doctor." + +But she only smiled. + +"You're like father, Minnie," she said. "You'll never +understand." + +"I'm not sure I want to," I snapped, and fell to polishing +glasses. + +The storm stopped a little at three and most of the guests waded +down through the snow for bridge and spring water. By that time +the afternoon train was in, and no Mr. Dick. Mr. Sam was keeping +the lawyer, Mr. Stitt, in the billiard room, and by four o'clock +they'd had everything that was in the bar and were inventing new +combinations of their own. And Mrs. Sam had gone to bed with a +nervous headache. + +Senator Biggs brought the mail down to the spring-house at four, +but there was nothing for me except a note from Mr. Sam, rather +shaky, which said he'd no word yet and that Mr. Stitt had +mixed all the cordials in the bar in a beer glass and had had to +go to bed. + +At half past four Mr. Thoburn came out for a minute. He said +there was only one other train from town that night and the +chances were it would be snowed up at the junction. + +"Better get on the band wagon before the parade's gone past," he +said in an undertone. But I went into my pantry and shut the +door with a slam, and when I came out he was gone. + +I nearly went crazy that afternoon. I put salt in Miss Cobb's +glass when she always drank the water plain. Once I put the +broom in the fire and started to sweep the porch with a fire log +Luckily they were busy with their letters and it went unnoticed, +the smell of burning straw not rising, so to speak, above the +sulphur in the spring. + +Senator Biggs went from one table to another telling how well he +felt since he stopped eating, and trying to coax the other men to +starve with him. + +It's funny how a man with a theory about his stomach isn't happy +until he has made some other fellow swallow it. + +"Well," he said, standing in front of the fire with a glass of +water in his hand, "it's worth while to feel like this. My +head's as clear as a bell. I don't care to eat; I don't want to +eat. The `fast' is the solution." + +"Two stages to that solution, Senator," said the bishop; "first, +resolution; last, dissolution." + +Then they all began at once. If you have ever heard twenty +people airing their theories on diet you know all about it. One +shouts for Horace Fletcher, and another one swears by the +scraped-beef treatment, and somebody else never touches a thing +but raw eggs and milk, and pretty soon there is a riot of +calories and carbohydrates. It always ends the same way: the man +with the loudest voice wins, and the defeated ones limp over to +the spring and tell their theories to me. They know I'm being +paid to listen. + +On this particular afternoon the bishop stopped the riot by +rising and holding up his hand. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, +"let us not be rancorous. If each of us has a theory, and that +theory works out to his satisfaction, then--why are we all here?" + +"Merely to tell one another the good news!" Mr. Jennings said +sourly from his corner. + +Honest, it was funny. If some folks were healthy they'd be +lonesome. + +But when things had got quiet--except Mr. Moody dropping nickels +into the slot-machine--I happened to look over at Miss Patty, and +I saw there was something wrong. She had a letter open in her +lap not one of the blue ones with the black and gold seal that +every one in the house knew came from the prince but a white one, +and she was staring at it as if she'd seen a ghost. + + + + + +CHAPTER V + +WANTED--AN OWNER + +I have never reproached Miss Patty, but if she had only given me +the letter to read or had told me the whole truth instead of a +part of it, I would have understood, and things would all have +been different. It is all very well for her to say that I looked +worried enough already, and that anyhow it was a family affair. +I SHOULD HAVE BEEN TOLD. + +All she did was to come up to me as I stood in the spring, with +her face perfectly white, and ask me if my Dicky Carter was the +Richard Carter who stayed at the Grosvenor in town. + +"He doesn't stay anywhere," I said, with my feet getting cold, +"but that's where he has apartments. What has he been doing +now?" + +"You're expecting him on the evening train, aren't you?" she +asked. "Don't stare like that: my father's watching." + +"He ought to be on the evening train," I said. I wasn't going to +say I expected him. I didn't. + +"Listen, Minnie," she said, "you'll have to send him away again +the moment he comes. He must not go into the house." + +I stood looking at her, with my mouth open. + +"Not go into the house," I repeated, "with everybody waiting for +him for the last six days, and Mr. Stitt here to turn things over +to him!" + +She stood tapping her foot, with her pretty brows knitted. + +"The wretch!" she cried, "the hateful creature as if things +weren't bad enough! I suppose he'll have to come, Minnie, but I +must see him before he sees any one else." + +Just then the bishop brought his glass over to the spring. + +"Hot this time, Minnie," he said. "Do you know, I'm getting the +mineral-water habit, Patty! I'm afraid plain water will have no +attraction for me after this." + +He put his hand over hers on the rail. They were old friends, +the bishop and the Jenningses. + +"Well, how goes it to-day with the father?" he said in a low +tone, and smiling. + +Miss Patty shrugged her shoulders. "Worse, if possible." + +"I thought so," he said cheerfully. "If state of mind is any +criterion I should think he has had a relapse. A little salt, +Minnie." Miss Patty stood watching him while he tasted it. + +"Bishop," she said suddenly, "will you do something for me?" + +"I always have, Patty." He was very fond of Miss Patty, was the +bishop. + +"Then--to-night, not later than eight o'clock, get father to play +cribbage, will you? And keep him in the card-room until nine." + +"Another escapade!" he said, pretending to be very serious. +"Patty, Patty, you'll be the death of me yet. Is thy servant a +dog, that he should do this thing?" + +"Certainly NOT," said Miss Patty. "Just a dear, slightly +bald, but still very distinguished slave!" + +The bishop picked up her left hand and looked at the ring and +from that to her face. + +"There will be plenty of slaves to kiss this little hand, where +you are going, my child," he said. "Sometimes I wish that some +nice red-blooded boy here at home--but I dare say it will turn +out surprisingly well as it is." + +"Bishop, Bishop!" Mrs. Moody called. "How naughty of you, and +with your bridge hand waiting to be held!" + +He carried his glass back to the table, stopping for a moment +beside Mr. Jennings. + +"If Patty becomes any more beautiful," he said, "I shall be in +favor of having her wear a mask. How are we young men to protect +ourselves?" + +"Pretty is as pretty does!" declared Mr. Jennings from behind his +newspaper, and Miss Patty went out with her chin up. + +Well, I knew Mr. Dick had been up to some mischief; I had +suspected it all along. But Miss Patty went to bed, and old Mrs. +Hutchins, who's a sort of lady's-maid-companion of hers, said she +mustn't be disturbed. I was pretty nearly sick myself. And when +Mr. Sam came out at five o'clock and said he'd been in the long- +distance telephone booth for an hour and had called everybody who +had ever known Mr. Dick, and that he had dropped right off +the earth, I just about gave up. He had got some detectives, he +said, and there was some sort of a story about his having kept +right on the train to Salem, Ohio, but if he had they'd lost the +trail there, and anyhow, with the railroad service tied up by the +storm there wasn't much chance of his getting to Finleyville in +time. + +Luckily Mr. Stitt was in bed with a mustard leaf over his stomach +and ice on his head, and didn't know whether it was night or +morning. But Thoburn was going around with a watch in his hand, +and Mr. Sam was for killing him and burying the body in the snow. + +At half past five I just about gave up. I was sitting in front +of the fire wondering why I'd taken influenza the spring before +from getting my feet wet in a shower, when I had been standing in +a mineral spring for so many years that it's a wonder I'm not +web-footed. It was when I had influenza that the old doctor made +the will, you remember. Maybe I was crying, I don't recall. + +It was dark outside, and nothing inside but firelight. Suddenly +I seemed to feel somebody looking at the back of my neck and +I turned around. There was a man standing outside one of the +windows, staring in. + +My first thought, of course, was that it was Mr. Dick, but just +as the face vanished I saw that it wasn't. It was older by three +or four years than Mr. Dick's and a bit fuller. + +I'm not nervous. I've had to hold my own against chronic +grouches too long to have nerves, so I went to the door and +looked out. The man came around the corner just then and I could +see him plainly in the firelight. He was covered with snow, and +he wore a sweater and no overcoat, but he looked like a +gentleman. + +"I beg your pardon for spying," he said, "but the fire looked so +snug! I've been trying to get to the hotel over there, but in +the dark I've lost the path." + +"That's not a hotel," I snapped, for that touched me on the raw. +"That's Hope Springs Sanatorium, and this is one of the Springs." + +"Oh, Hope Springs, internal instead of eternal!" he said. +"That's awfully bad, isn't it? To tell you the truth, I think +I'd better come in and get some; I'm short on hope just now." + +I thought that was likely enough, for although his voice was +cheerful and his eyes smiled, there was a drawn look around his +mouth, and he hadn't shaved that day. I wish I had had as much +experience in learning what's right with folks as I have had in +learning what's wrong with them. + +"You'd better come in and get warm, anyhow," I told him, "only +don't spring any more gags. I've been `Hebe' for fourteen years +and I've served all the fancy drinks you can name over the brass +railing of that spring. Nowadays, when a fellow gets smart and +asks for a Mamie Taylor, I charge him a Mamie Taylor price." + +He shut the door behind him and came over to the fire. + +"I'm pretty well frozen," he said. "Don't be astonished if I +melt before your eyes; I've been walking for hours." + +Now that I had a better chance to see him I'd sized up that drawn +look around his mouth. + +"Missed your luncheon, I suppose," I said, poking the fire log. +He grinned rather sheepishly. + +"Well, I haven't had any, and I've certainly missed it," he said. + +"Fasting's healthy, you know." + +I thought of Senator Biggs, who carried enough fat to nourish him +for months, and then I looked at my visitor, who hadn't an ounce +of extra flesh on him. + +"Nothing's healthy that isn't natural," I declared. "If you'd +care for a dish of buttered and salted pop-corn, there's some on +the mantel. It's pretty salty; the idea is to make folks thirsty +so they'll enjoy the mineral water." + +"Think of raising a real thirst only to drown it with spring +water!" he said. But he got the pop corn and he ate it all. If +he hadn't had any luncheon he hadn't had much breakfast. The +queer part was--he was a gentleman; his clothes were the right +sort, but he had on patent leather shoes in all that snow and an +automobile cap. + +I put away the glasses while he ate. Pretty soon he looked up +and the drawn lines were gone. He wasn't like Mr. Dick, but he +was the same type, only taller and heavier built. + +"And so it isn't a hotel," he remarked. "Well, I'm sorry. The +caravansary in the village is not to my liking, and I had thought +of engaging a suite up here. My secretary usually attends to +these things, but--don't take away all the glasses, Heb--I beg +your +pardon--but the thirst is coming." + +He filled the glass himself and then he came up and stood in +front of me, with the glass held up in the air. + +"To the best woman I have met in many days," he said, not mocking +but serious. "I was about to lie down and let the little birds +cover me with leaves." Then he glanced at the empty dish and +smiled. "To buttered pop-corn! Long may it wave!" he said, and +emptied the glass. + +Well, I found a couple of apples in my pantry and brought them +out, and after he ate them he told me what had happened to him. +He had been a little of everything since he left college he was +about twenty-five had crossed the Atlantic in a catboat and gone +with somebody or other into some part of Africa--they got lost +and had to eat each other or lizards, or something like that--and +then he went to the Philippines, and got stuck there and had to +sell books to get home. He had a little money, "enough for a +grub-stake," he said, and all his folks were dead. Then a +college friend of his wrote a rural play called Sweet Peas-- +"Great title, don't you think?" he asked--and he put up all +the money. It would have been a hit, he said, but the kid in the +play--the one that unites its parents in the last act just before +he dies of tuberculosis--the kid took the mumps and looked as if, +instead of fading away, he was going to blow up. Everybody was +so afraid of him that they let him die alone for three nights in +the middle of the stage. Then the leading woman took the mumps, +and the sheriff took everything else. + +"You city folks seem to know so much," I said, "and yet you bring +a country play to the country! Why don't you bring out a play +with women in low-necked gowns, and champagne suppers, and a +scandal or two? They packed Pike's Opera-House three years ago +with a play called Why Women Sin." + +Well, of course, the thing failed, and he lost every dollar he'd +put into it, which was all he had, including what he had in his +pockets. + +"They seized my trunks," he explained, "and I sold my fur-lined +overcoat for eight dollars, which took one of the girls back +home. It's hard for the women. A fellow can always get some +sort of a job--I was coming up here to see if they needed an +extra clerk or a waiter, or chauffeur, or anything that meant +a roof and something to eat--but I suppose they don't need a +jack-of-all-trades." + +"No," I answered, "but I'll tell you what I think they're going +to need. And that's an owner!" + + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE CONSPIRACY + +I'm not making any excuses. I did it for the best. In any sort +of crisis there are always folks who stand around and wring their +hands and say, "What shall we do?" And then if it's a fire and +somebody has had enough sense to send for the engines, they say: +"Just look at what the water did!" Although as far as I can see +I'm the only one that suffered any damage. + +If Mr. Thoburn had not been there, sitting by to see the old +sanatorium die so it could sprout wings and fly as a summer +hotel, I'd never have thought of it. But I was in despair. + +I got up and opened the door, but the Snow came in in a cloud, +and the path was half a foot deep again. It shows on what little +threads big things hang, for when I saw the storm I gave up the +idea of bringing Mr. Sam down to see the young man, and +the breath of fresh air in my face brought me to my senses. + +But the angel of providence appeared in the shape of Mike, the +bath man, coming down through the snow in a tearing rage. The +instant I saw Mike I knew it was settled. + +"Am I or am I not to give Mr. Moody a needle shower?" he shouted, +almost beside himself. And I saw he had his overcoat over his +bath costume, which is a Turkish towel. + +"A needle shower followed by a salt rub," said I. "He's been +having them for eleven years. What's the matter?" + +"That fool of a young doctor," shouted Mike, "he told him before +he left that if he'd been taking them for eleven years and wasn't +any better it was time to stop. Ain't business bad enough--only +four people in the house takin' baths regular--without his +buttin' in!" + +"Where's Mr. Moody?" + +"In the bath. I've locked up his clothes." + +"You give him a needle shower and a salt rub," I ordered, "and if +he makes a fuss just send for me. And, Mike," I said, as he +started out, "ask Mr. Van Alstyne to come out here immediately." + +That's the way it was all the time. Everybody brought their +troubles to me, and I guess I thought I was a little tin god on +wheels and the place couldn't get along without me. But it did; +it does. We all think we'll leave a big hole behind us when we +go, but it's just like taking your thumb out of a bowl of soup. +There isn't even a dent. + +Mr. Van Alstyne came out on the run, and when he saw Mr. Pierce +by the fire--that was his name, Alan Pierce--he stopped and +stared. Then he said: + +"You infernal young scamp!" And with that Mr. Pierce jumped up, +surprised and pretty mad, and Mr. Van Alstyne saw his mistake. + +"I'm sure I beg your pardon!" he said. "The fact is, I was +expecting somebody else, and in the firelight--" + +"You surprised me, that's all," said Mr. Pierce. "Under the +circumstances, I'm glad I'm not the other chap." + +"You may be," assured Mr. Sam grimly. "You're not unlike him, by +the way. A little taller and heavier, but--" + +Now it's all very well for Mr. Sam to say I originated the idea +and all that, but as truly as I am writing this, as I watched his +face I saw the same thought come into it. He looked Mr. Pierce +up and down, and then he stared into the fire and puckered his +mouth to whistle, but he didn't. And finally he glanced at me, +but I was looking into the fire, too. + +"Just come, haven't you?" he asked. "How did you get up the +hill?" + +"Walked," said Mr. Pierce, smiling. "It took some digging, too. +But I didn't come for my health, unless you think three meals a +day are necessary for health." + +Mr. Sam turned and stared at him. "By Jove! you don't mean it!" + +"I wish I didn't," Mr. Pierce replied. "One of the hardest +things I've had to remember for the last ten hours was that for +two years I voluntarily ate only two meals a day. A man's a fool +to do a thing like that! It's reckless." + +Mr. Sam got up and began to walk the floor, his hands in his +pockets. He tried to get my eye, but still I looked in the fire. + +"All traffic's held up, Minnie," he said. "The eight o'clock +train is stalled beyond the junction, in a drift. I've wired the +conductor, and Carter isn't on it." + +"Well?" said I. + +"If we could only get past to-day," Mr. Sam went on; "if Thoburn +would only choke to death, or--if there was somebody around who +looked like Dick. I dare say, by to-morrow--" He looked at Mr. +Pierce, who smiled and looked at him. + +"And I resemble Dick!" said Mr. Pierce. "Well, if he's a moral +and upright young man--" + +"He isn't!" Mr. Sam broke in savagely. And then and there he sat +down and told Mr. Pierce the trouble we were in, and what sort of +cheerful idiot Dicky Carter was, and how everybody liked him, but +wished he would grow up before the family good name was gone, and +that now he had a chance to make good and be self-supporting, and +he wasn't around, and if Mr. Sam ever got his hands on him he'd +choke a little sense down his throat. + +And then Mr. Pierce told about the play and the mumps, and how he +was stranded. When Mr. Sam asked him outright if he'd take Mr. +Dick's place overnight he agreed at once. + +"I haven't anything to lose," he said, "and anyhow I've been on a +diet of Sweet Peas so long that a sanatorium is about what I +need." + +"It's like this," explained Mr. Sam, "Old Stitt is pretty +thoroughly jingled--excuse me, Minnie, but it's the fact. I'll +take you to his room, with the lights low, and all you'll need to +do is to shake hands with him. He's going on the early train to- +morrow. Then you needn't mix around much with the guests until +to-morrow, and by that time I hope to have Dick within thrashing +distance." + +Just as they'd got it arranged that Mr. Pierce was to put on Mr. +Sam's overcoat and walk down to the village so that he could come +up in a sleigh, as if he had driven over from Yorkton--he was +only to walk across the hall in front of the office, with his +collar up, just enough to show himself and then go to his room +with a chill--just as it was all arranged, Mr. Sam thought of +something. + +"The house people are waiting for Dick," he said to me, "and +about forty women are crocheting in the lobby, so they'll be sure +to see him. Won't some of them know it isn't Dick?" + +I thought pretty fast. + +"He hasn't been around much lately," I said. "Nobody would know +except Mrs. Wiggins. She'll never forget him; the last time he +was here he put on her false front like a beard and wore it down +to dinner." + +"Then it's all off," he groaned. "She's got as many eyes as a +potato." + +"And about as much sense," said I. "Fiddlesticks! She's not so +good we can't replace her, and what's the use of swallowing a +camel and then sticking at a housekeeper?" + +"You can't get her out of the house in an hour," he objected, but +in a weak voice. + +"I can!" I said firmly. + +(I did. Inside of an hour she went to the clerk, Mr. Slocum, and +handed in her resignation. She was a touchy person, but I did +NOT say all that was quoted. I did NOT say the kitchen was +filthy; I only said it took away my appetite to look in at the +door. But she left, which is the point.) + +Well, I stood in the doorway and watched them disappear in the +darkness, and I felt better than I had all day. It's great to be +able to DO something, even if that something is wrong. But as +I put on my shawl and turned out the lights, I suddenly +remembered. Miss Patty would be waiting in the lobby for Mr. +Dick, and she would not be crocheting! + + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +MR. PIERCE ACQUIRES A WIFE + +Whoever has charge of the spring-house at Hope Springs takes the +news stand in the evening. That's an old rule. The news stand +includes tobacco and a circulating library, and is close to the +office, and if I missed any human nature at the spring I got it +there. If you can't tell all about a man by the way he asks for +mineral water and drinks it, by the time you've supplied his +literature and his tobacco and heard him grumbling over his bill +at the office, you've got a line on him and a hook in it. + +After I ate my supper I relieved Amanda King, who runs the news +stand in the daytime, when she isn't laid off with the toothache. + +Mr. Sam was right. All the women had on their puffs, and they +were sitting in a half-circle on each side of the door. +Mrs. Sam was there, looking frightened and anxious, and standing +near the card-room door was Miss Patty. She was all in white, +with two red spots on her cheeks, and I thought if her prince +could have seen her then he would pretty nearly have eaten her +up. Mr. Thoburn was there, of course, pretending to read the +paper, but every now and then he looked at his watch, and once he +got up and paced off the lobby, putting down the length in his +note-book. I didn't need a mind-reader to tell me he was +figuring the cost of a new hardwood floor and four new rugs. + +Mr. Sam came to the news stand, and he was so nervous he could +hardly light a cigarette. + +"I've had a message from one of the detectives," he said. +"They've traced him to Salem, Ohio, but they lost him there. If +we can only hold on this evening--! Look at that first-night +audience!" + +"Mr. Pierce is due in three minutes," I told him. "I hope you +told him to kiss his sister." + +"Nothing of the sort," he objected. "Why should he kiss her? +Mrs. Van Alstyne is afraid of the whole thing: she won't stand +for that." + +"I guess she could endure it," I remarked dryly. + +"It's astonishing how much of that sort of thing a woman can +bear." + +He looked at me and grinned. + +"By gad," he said, "I wouldn't be as sophisticated as you are for +a good deal. Isn't that the sleigh?" + +Everybody had heard it. The women sat up and craned forward to +look at the door: Mrs. Sam was sitting forward clutching the arms +of her chair. She was in white, having laid off her black for +that evening, with a red rose pinned on her so Mr. Pierce would +know her. Miss Patty heard the sleigh-bells also, and she turned +and came toward the door. Her mouth was set hard, and she was +twisting the ruby ring as she always did when she was nervous. +And at the same moment Mr. Sam and I both saw it; she was in +white, too, and she had a red rose tucked in her belt! + +Mr. Sam muttered something and rushed at her, but he was too +late. Just as he got to her the door opened and in came Mr. +Pierce, with Mr. Sam's fur coat turned up around his ears and Mr. +Sam's fur cap drawn well down on his head. He stood for an +instant blinking in the light, and Mrs. Van Alstyne got up +nervously. He never even saw her. His eyes lighted on Miss +Patty's face and stayed there. Mr. Sam was there, but what could +he do? Mr. Pierce walked over to Miss Patty, took her hand, +said, "Hello there!" and KISSED HER. It was awful. + +Most women will do anything to save a scene, and that helped us, +for she never turned a hair. But when Mr. Sam got him by the arm +and led him toward the stairs, she turned so that the old cats +sitting around could not see her and her face was scarlet. She +went over to the wood fire--our lobby is a sort of big room with +chairs and tables and palms, and an open fire in winter--and sat +down. I don't think she knew herself whether she was most +astonished or angry. + +Mrs. Biggs gave a nasty little laugh. + +"Your brother didn't see you," she said to Mrs. Van Alstyne. "I +dare say a sister doesn't count much when a future princess is +around!" + +Mrs. Van Alstyne was still staring up the staircase, but she came +to herself at that. She had some grit in her, if she did look +like a French doll. + +"My brother and Miss Jennings are very old friends," she remarked +quietly. I believe that was what she thought, too. I don't +think she had seen the other red rose, and what was she to think +but that Mr. Pierce had known Miss Jennings somewhere? She was +dazed, Mrs. Sam was. But she carried off the situation anyhow, +and gave us time to breathe. We needed it. + +"If I were his highness," said Miss Cobb, spreading the Irish +lace collar she was making over her knee and squinting at it, "I +should wish my fiancee to be more er--dignified. Those old +Austrian families are very haughty. They would not understand +our American habit of osculation." + +I was pretty mad at that, for anybody could have seen Miss Patty +didn't kiss him. + +"If by osculation you mean kissing, Miss Cobb," I said, going +over to her, "I guess you don't remember the Austrian count who +was a head waiter here. If there was anything in the way of +osculation that that member of an old Austrian family didn't +know, I've got to find it out. He could kiss all around any +American I ever saw!" + +I went back to my news stand. I was shaking so my knees would +hardly hold me. All I could think of was that they had swallowed +Mr. Pierce, bait and hook, and that for a time we were saved, +although in the electric light Mr. Pierce was a good bit less +like Dicky Carter than he had seemed to be in the spring-house by +the fire. + +Well, "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." + +Everybody went to bed early. Mr. Thoburn came over and bought a +cigar on his way up-stairs, and he was as gloomy as he had been +cheerful before. + +"Well," I said, "I guess you won't put a dancing floor in the +dining-room just yet, Mr. Thoburn." + +"I'm not in a hurry," he snapped. "It's only January, and I +don't want the place until May. I'll get it when I'm ready for +it. I had a good look at young Carter, and he's got too square a +jaw to run a successful neurasthenics' home." + +I went to the pantry myself at ten o'clock and fixed a tray of +supper for Mr. Pierce. He would need all his strength the next +day, and a man can't travel far on buttered pop-corn. I found +some chicken and got a bottle of the old doctor's wine--I had +kept the key of his wine-cellar since he died --and carried +the tray up to Mr. Pierce's sitting-room. He had the old +doctor's suite. + +The door was open an inch or so, and as I was about to knock I +heard a girl's voice. It was Miss Patty! + +"How can you deny it?" she was saying angrily. "I dare say you +will even deny that you ever saw this letter before!" + +There was a minute's pause while I suppose he looked at the +letter. + +"I never did!" he said solemnly. + +There had been a queer sound all along, but now I made it out. +Some one else was in the room, sniveling and crying. + +"My poor lamb!" it whimpered. And I knew it was Mrs. Hutchins, +Miss Patty's old nurse. + +"Perhaps," said Miss Patty, "you also deny that you were in Ohio +the day before yesterday." + +"I was in Ohio, but I positively assert--" + +"I'll send for the police, that's what I'll do!" Mrs. Hutchins +said, with a burst of rage, and her chair creaked. "How can I +ever tell your father?" + +"You'll do nothing of the sort," said Miss Patty. "Do you want +the whole story in the papers? Isn't it awful enough as it +is? Mr. Carter, I have asked my question twice now and I am +waiting for an answer." + +"But I don't know the answer!" he said miserably. "I--I assure +you, I'm absolutely in the dark. I don't know what's in the +letter. I--I haven't always done what I should, I dare say, but +my conduct in the state of Ohio during the last few weeks has +been without stain--unless I've forgotten--but if it had been +anything very heinous, I'd remember, don't you think?" + +Somebody crossed the room, and a paper rustled. + +"Read that!" said Miss Patty's voice. And then silence for a +minute. + +"Good lord!" exclaimed Mr. Pierce. + +"Do you deny that?" + +"Absolutely!" he said firmly. "I--I have never even heard of the +Reverend Dwight Johnstone--" + +There was a scream from Mrs. Hutchins, and a creak as she fell +into her chair again. + +"Your father!" she said, over and over. "What can we say to your +father?" + +"And that is all you will say?" demanded Miss Patty scornfully. +"`You don't know;' `there's a mistake;' `you never saw the +letter before!' Oh, if I were only a man!" + +"I'll tell you what we'll do," Mr. Pierce said, with something +like hope in his voice. "We'll send for Mr. Van Alstyne! That's +the thing, of course. I'll send for--er--Jim." + +Mr. Van Alstyne's name is Sam, but nobody noticed. + +"Mr. Van Alstyne!" repeated Miss Patty in a dazed way. + +I guessed it was about time to make a diversion, so I knocked and +walked in with the tray, and they all glared at me. Mrs. +Hutchins was collapsed in a chair, holding a wet handkerchief to +her eyes, and one side of her cap was loose and hanging down. +Miss Patty was standing by a table, white and angry, and Mr. +Pierce was about a yard from her, with the letter in his hands. +But he was looking at her. + +"I've brought your supper, Mr. Carter," I began. Then I stopped +and stared at Miss Patty and Mrs. Hutchins. "Oh," I said. + +"Thank you," said Mr. Pierce, very uncomfortable. "Just put it +down anywhere." + +I stalked across the room and put it on the table. Then I turned +and looked at Mrs. Hutchins. + +"I'm sorry," I said, "but it's one of the rules of this house +that guests don't come to these rooms. They're strictly +private. It isn't MY rule, ladies, but if you will step down +to the parlor--" + +Mrs. Hutchins' face turned purple. She got up in a hurry. + +"I'm here with Miss Jennings on a purely personal matter," she +said furiously. "How dare you turn us out?" + +"Nonsense, Minnie!" said Miss Patty. "I'll go when I'm ready." + +"Rule of the house," I remarked, and going over to the door I +stood holding it open. There wasn't any such rule, but I had to +get them out; they had Mr. Pierce driven into a corner and +yelling for help. + +"There is no such rule and you know it, Minnie!" Miss Patty said +angrily. "Come, Nana! We're not learning anything, and there's +nothing to be done until morning, anyhow. My head's whirling." + +Mrs. Hutchins went out first. + +"The first thing I'D do if I owned this place, I'd get rid +of that red-haired girl," she snapped to Mr. Pierce. "If you +want to know why there are fewer guests here every year, I'll +tell you. SHE'S the reason!" Then she flounced out with her +head up. + +(That was pure piffle. The real reason, as every thinking person +knows, is Christian Science. It's cheaper and more handy. And +now that it isn't heresy to say it, the spring being floored +over, I reckon that most mineral springs cure by suggestion. +Also, of course, if a man's drinking four gallons of lithia water +a day, he's so saturated that if he does throw in anything +alcoholic or indigestible, it's too busy swimming for its life to +do any harm.) + +Mr. Pierce took a quick step toward Miss Patty and looked down at +her. + +"About--what happened down-stairs to-night," he stammered, with +the unhappiest face I ever saw on a man, "I--I've been ready to +knock my fool head off ever since. It was a mistake--a--" + +"My letter, please," said Miss Patty coolly, looking back at him +without a blink. + +"Please don't look like that!" he begged. "I came in suddenly +out of the darkness, and you--" + +"My letter, please!" she said again, raising her eyebrows. + +He gave up trying then. He held out the letter and she took it +and went out with her head up and scorn in the very way she +trailed her skirt over the door-sill. But I'm no fool; it didn't +need the way he touched the door-knob where she had been holding +it, when he closed the door after her, to tell me what ailed him. + +He was crazy about her from the minute he saw her, and he hadn't +a change of linen or a cent to his name. And she, as you might +say, on the ragged edge of royalty, with queens and princes +sending her stomachers and tiaras until she'd hardly need +clothes! Well, a cat may look at a king. + +He went over to the fireplace, where I was putting his coffee to +keep it hot, and looked down at me. + +"I've a suspicion, Minnie," he said, "that, to use a vulgar +expression, I've bitten off more than I can chew in this little +undertaking, and that I'm in imminent danger of choking to death. + +Do you know anybody, a friend of Miss er--Jennings, named +Dorothy?" + +"She's got a younger sister of that name," I said, with a sort of +chill going over me. "She's in boarding-school now." + +"Oh, no, she's not!" he remarked, picking up the coffee-pot. "It +seems that I met her on the train somewhere or other the day +before yesterday, and ran off with her and married her!" + +I sat back on the rug speechless. + +"You should have warned me, Minnie," he went on, growing more +cheerful over his chicken and coffee. "I came up here to-night, +the proud possessor of a bunch of keys, a patent folding cork- +screw and a pocket, automobile road map. Inside two hours I have +a sanatorium and a wife. At this rate, Minnie, before morning I +may reasonably hope to have a family." + +I sat where I was on the floor and stared into the fire. Don't +tell me the way of the wicked is hard; the wicked get all the fun +there is out of life, and as far as I can see, it's the +respectable "in at ten o'clock and up at seven" part of the +wicked's family that has all the trouble and does the worrying. + +"If we could only keep it hidden for a few days!" I said. +"But, of course, the papers will get it, and just now, with +columns every day about Miss Patty's clothes--" + +"Her what?" + +"And all the princes of the blood sending presents, and the king +not favoring it very much--" + +"What are you talking about?" + +"About Miss Jennings' wedding. Don't you read the newspaper?" + +He hadn't really known who she was up to that minute. He put +down the tray and got up. + +"I--I hadn't connected her with the--the newspaper Miss +Jennings," he said, and lighted a cigarette over the lamp. +Something in his face startled me, I must say. + +"You're not going to give up now?" I asked. I got up and put my +hand on his arm, and I think he was shaking. "If you do, I'll-- +I'll go out and drown myself, head down, in the spring." + +He had been going to run away--I saw it then--but he put a hand +over mine. Then he looked at the door where Miss Patty had gone +out and gave himself a shake. + +"I'll stay," he said. "We'll fight it out on this line if it +takes all summer, Minnie." He stood looking into the fire, and +although I'm not fond of men, knowing, as I have explained, a +great deal about their stomachs and livers and very little about +their hearts, there was something about Mr. Pierce that made me +want to go up and pat him on the head like a little boy. "After +all," he said, "what's blue blood to good red blood?" + +Which was almost what the bishop had said! + + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +AND MR. MOODY INDIGESTION + +Mr. Moody took indigestion that night--not but that he always had +it, but this was worse--and Mrs. Moody came to my room about two +o'clock and knocked at the door. + +"You'd better come," she said. "There's no doctor, and he's +awful bad. Blames you, too; he says you made him take a salt +rub." + +"My land," I snapped, trying to find my bedroom slippers, "I +didn't make him take clam chowder for supper, and that's what's +the matter with him. He's going on a strained rice diet, that's +what he's going to do. I've got to have my sleep." + +She was waiting in the hall in her kimono, and holding a candle. +Anybody could see she'd been crying. As she often said to me, of +course she was grateful that Mr. Moody didn't drink--no one knew +his virtues better than she did. But her sister married +a man who went on a terrible bat twice a year, and all the rest +of the time he was humble and affable trying to make up for it. +And sometimes she thought if Mr. Moody would only take a little +whisky when he had these attacks--! I'd rather be the wife of a +cheerful drunkard any time than have to live with a cantankerous +saint. Miss Cobb and I had had many a fight over it, but at that +time there wasn't much likelihood of either of us being called on +to choose. + +Well, we went down to Mr. Moody's room, and he was sitting up in +bed with his knees drawn up to his chin and a hot-water bottle +held to him. + +"Look at your work, woman," he said to me when I opened the door. + +"I'm dying!" + +"You look sick," I said, going over to the bed. It never does to +cross them when they get to the water-bottle stage. "The +pharmacy clerk's gone to a dance over at Trimble's, but I guess I +can find you some whisky." + +"Do have some whisky, George," begged Mrs. Moody, remembering her +brother-in-law. + +"I never touch the stuff and you both know it," he snarled. He +had a fresh pain just then and stopped, clutching up the +bottle. "Besides," he finished, when it was over, "I haven't got +any whisky." + +Well, to make a long story short, we got him to agree to some +whisky from the pharmacy, with a drop of peppermint in it, if he +could wash it down with spring water so it wouldn't do him any +harm. + +"There isn't any spring water in the house," I said, losing my +temper a little, "and I'm not going out there in my bedroom +slippers, Mr. Moody. I don't see why your eating what you +shouldn't needs to give me pneumonia." + +Mrs. Moody was standing beside the bed, and I saw her double chin +begin to work. If you have ever seen a fat woman, in a short red +kimono holding a candle by, a bed, and crying, you know how +helpless she looks. + +"Don't go, Minnie," she sniffled. "It would be too awful. If +you are afraid you could take the poker." + +"I'm not going!" I declared firmly. "It's--it's dratted idiocy, +that's all. Plain water would do well enough. There's a lot of +people think whisky is poison with water, anyhow. Where's the +pitcher?" + +Oh, yes, I went. I put on some stockings of Mrs. Moody's and +a petticoat and a shawl and started. It was when I was in the +pharmacy looking for the peppermint that I first noticed my joint +again. A joint like that's a blessing or a curse, the way you +look at it. + +I found the peppermint and some whisky and put them on the +stairs. Then I took my pitcher and lantern and started for the +spring-house. It was still snowing, and part of the time Mrs. +Moody's stockings were up to their knees. The wind was blowing +hard, and when I rounded the corner of the house my lantern went +out. I stood there in the storm, with the shawl flapping, +thanking heaven I was a single woman, and about ready to go back +and tell Mr. Moody what I thought of him when I looked toward the +spring-house. + +At first I thought it was afire, then I saw that the light was +coming from the windows. Somebody was inside, with a big fire +and all the lights going. + +I'd had tramps sleep all night in the spring-house before, and +once they left a card by the spring: "Water, water everywhere +and not a drop to drink!" So I started out through the snow on a +half run. By the bridge over Hope Springs Creek I slipped +and fell, and I heard the pitcher smash to bits on the ice +below. But as soon as I could move I went on again. That +spring-house had been my home for a good many years, and the +tramp didn't live who could spend the night there if I knew it. + +I realized then that I should have taken the poker. I went over +cautiously to one of the windows, wading in deep snow to get +there--and if you have ever done that in a pair of bedroom +slippers you can realize the state of my mind--and looked in. + +There were three chairs drawn up in a row in front of the fire, +with my bearskin hearth-rug on them to make a couch, and my +shepherd's plaid shawl folded at one end for a pillow. And +stretched on that with her long sealskin coat laid over her was +Dorothy Jennings, Miss Patty's younger sister! She was alone, as +far as I could see, and she was leaning on her elbow with her +cheek in her hand, staring at the fire. Just then the door into +the pantry opened and out came Mr. Dick himself. + +"Were you calling, honey?" he said, coming over and looking down +at her. + +"You were such a long time!" says she, glancing up under her +lashes at him. "I--I was lonely!" + +"Bless you," says Mr. Dick, stooping over her. "What did I ever +do without you?" + +I could have told her a few things he did, but by that time it +was coming over me pretty strong that here was the real Dicky +Carter and that I had an extra one on my hands. The minute I +looked at this one I knew that nobody but a blind man would +mistake one for the other, and Mr. Thoburn wasn't blind. I tell +you I stood out in that snow-bank and perspired! + +When I looked again Mr. Dick was on his knees by the row of +chairs, and Miss Dorothy--Mrs. Dicky, of course--was running her +fingers through his hair. + +"Minnie used to keep apples and things in the pantry," he said, +"but she must be growing stingy in her old age; there's not a +bite there." + +"I'm not so very hungry when I have you!" cooed Mrs. Dicky. + +"But you can't eat me." He brought her hand down from his hair-- +I may be stingy in my old age, but I've learned a few things, and +one is that a man feels like a fool with his hair rumpled, and I +can tell the degree of a woman's experience by the way she +lets his top hair alone--and pretended to bite it, her hand, of +course. "Although I could eat you," he said. "I'd like to take +a bite out of your throat right there." + +Well, it was no place for me unless they knew I was around. I +waded around to the door and walked in, and there was a grand +upsetting of the sealskin coat and my shepherd's plaid shawl. +Mr. Dick jumped to his feet and Mrs. Dick sat bolt upright and +stared at me over the backs of the chairs. + +"Minnie!" cried Mr. Dick. "As I'm a married man, it's Minnie +herself; Minnie, the guardian angel! The spirit of the place! +Dorothy, don't you remember Minnie?" + +She came toward me with her hand out. She was a pretty little +thing, not so beautiful as Miss Patty, but with a nice way about +her. + +"I'm awfully glad to see you again," she said. "Of course I +remember--why you are hardly dressed at all! You must be +frozen!" + +I went over to the fire and emptied my bedroom slippers of snow. +Then I sat down and looked at them both. + +"Frozen!" repeated I; "I'm in a hot sweat. If you two +children meant to come, why in creation didn't you come in time?" + +"We did," replied Mr. Dick, promptly. "We crawled under the wire +fence into the deer park at five minutes to twelve. The will +said `Be on the ground,' and I was--flat on the ground!" + +"We've had the police," I said, drearily enough. "I wouldn't +live through another day like yesterday for a hundred dollars." + +"We were held up by the snow," he explained. "We got a sleigh to +come over in, but we walked up the hill and came here. I don't +mind saying that my wife's people don't know about this yet, and +we're going to lay low until we've cooked up some sort of a +scheme to tell them." Then he came over and put his hand on my +shoulder. + +"Poor old Minnie!" he said; "honest, I'm sorry. I've been a hard +child to raise, haven't I? But that's all over, Minnie. I've +got an incentive now, and it's `steady, old boy,' for me from +now. You and I will run the place and run it right." + +"I don't want to!" I retorted, holding my bedroom slippers to +steam before the fire. "I'm going to buy out Timmon's candy +store and live a quiet life, Mr. Dick. This place is making me +old." + +"Nonsense! We're going to work together, and we'll make this the +busiest spot in seven counties. Dorothy and I have got it all +planned out and we've got some corking good ideas." He put his +hands in his pockets and strutted up and down. "It's the day of +advertising, you know, Minnie," he said. "You've got to have the +goods, and then you've got to let people know you've got the +goods. What would you say to a shooting-gallery in the basement, +under the reading-room?" + +"Fine!" I said, with sarcasm, turning my slippers. "If things +got too quiet that would wake them up a bit, and we could have a +balloon ascension on Saturdays!" + +"Not an ascension," said he, with my bitterness going right over +his head. "Nothing sensational, Minnie. That's the way with +women; they're always theatrical. But what's the matter with a +captive balloon, and letting fresh-air cranks sleep in a big +basket bed--say, at five hundred feet? Or a thousand--a thousand +would be better. The air's purer." + +"With a net below," says I, "in case they should turn over and +fall out of bed! It's funny nobody ever thought of it before!" + +"Isn't it?" exclaimed Mrs. Dick. "And we've all sorts of ideas. +Dick--Mr. Carter has learned of a brand new cocktail for the +men--" + +"A lulu!" he broke in. + +"And I'm going around to read to the old ladies and hold their +hands--" + +"You'll have to chloroform them first," I put in. "Perhaps it +would be better to give the women the cocktail and hold the men's +hands." + +"Oh, if you're going to be funny!" Mr. Dick said savagely, "we'll +not tell you any more. I've been counting on you, Minnie. +You've been here so long. You know," he said to his wife, "when +I was a little shaver I thought Minnie had webbed-feet--she was +always on the bank, like a duck. You ARE a duck, Minnie," he +says to me; "a nice red-headed duck! Now don't be quirky and +spoil everything." + +I couldn't be light-hearted to save my life. + +"Your sister's been wild all day," I told Mrs. Dick. "She got +your letter to-day--yesterday--but I don't think she's told your +father yet." + +"What!" she screeched, and caught at the mantelpiece to hold +herself. "Not Pat!" she said, horrified, "and father! Here!" + +Well, I listened while they told me. They hadn't had the +faintest idea that Mr. Jennings and Miss Patty were there at the +sanatorium. The girl had been making a round of visits in the +Christmas holidays, and instead of going back to school she'd +sent a forged excuse and got a month off--she hadn't had any +letters, of course. The plan had been not to tell anybody but +her sister until Mr. Dick had made good at the sanatorium. + +"The idea was this, Minnie," said Mr. Dick. "Old--I mean Mr. +Jennings is--is not well; he has a chronic indisposition--" + +"Disposition, I call it," put in Mr. Jennings' daughter. + +"And he's apt to regard my running away with Dorothy when I +haven't a penny as more of an embezzlement than an elopement." + +"Fiddle!" exclaimed Mrs. Dick. "I asked you to marry me, and now +they're here and have to spoil it all." + +The thought of her father and his disposition suddenly +overpowered her and she put her yellow head on the back of a +chair and began to cry. + +"I--I can't tell him!" she sobbed. "I wrote to Pat,--why doesn't +Pat tell him? I'm going back to school." + +"You'll do nothing of the sort. You're a married woman now, and +where I go you go. My country is your country, and my sanatorium +is your sanatorium." He was in a great rage. + +But she got up and began trying to pull on her fur coat, and her +jaw was set. She looked like her father for a minute. + +"Where are you going?" he asked, looking scared. + +"Anywhere. I'll go down to the station and take the first train, +it doesn't matter where to." She picked up her muff, but he went +over and stood against the door. + +"Not a step without me!" he declared. "I'll go with you, of +course; you know that. I'm not afraid of your father: I'd as +soon as not go in and wake him now and tell him the whole thing-- +that you've married a chap who isn't worth the butter on his +bread, who can't buy you kid gloves--" + +"But you will, as soon as the sanatorium succeeds!" she put +in bravely. She put down her muff. "Don't tell him to-night, +anyhow. Maybe Pat will think of some way to break it to him. +She can do a lot with father." + +"I hope she can think of some way to break another Richard Carter +to the people in the house," I said tartly. + +"Another Richard Carter!" they said together, and then I told +them about how we had waited and got desperate, and how we'd +brought in Mr. Pierce at the last minute and that he was asleep +now at the house. They roared. To save my life I couldn't see +that it was funny. But when I came to the part about Thoburn +being there, and his having had a good look at Mr. Pierce, and +that he was waiting around with his jaws open to snap up the +place when it fell under the hammer, Mr. Dick stopped laughing +and looked serious. + +"Lord deliver us from our friends!" he said. "Between you and +Sam, you've got things in a lovely mess, Minnie. What are you +going to do about it now?" + +"It's possible we can get by Thoburn," I said. "You can slip in +to-night, we can get Mr. Pierce out--Lord knows he'll be glad +to go--and Miss Dorothy can go back to school. Then, later, when +you've got things running and are making good--" + +"I'm not going back to school," she declared, "but I'll go away; +I'll not stand in your way, Dicky." She took two steps toward +the door and waited for him to stop her. + +"Nonsense, Minnie," he exclaimed angrily and put his arm around +her, "I won't be separated from my wife. You got me into this +scrape, and--" + +"I didn't marry you!" I retorted. "And I'm not responsible for +your father-in-law's disposition." + +"You'll have to help us out," he finished. + +"What shall I do? Murder Mr. Jennings?" I asked bitterly. "If +you expect me to suggest that you both go to the house, and your +wife can hide in your rooms--" + +"Why not?" asked Mr. Dick. + +Well, I sat down again and explained patiently that it would get +out among the servants and cause a scandal, and that even if it +didn't I wasn't going to have any more deception: I had enough +already. And after a while they saw it as I did, and agreed to +wait and see Miss Patty before they decided. They wanted to +have her wakened at once, but I refused, although I agreed to +bring her out first thing in the morning. + +"But you can't stay here," I said. "There'll be Miss Cobb at +nine o'clock, and the man comes to light the fire at eight." + +"We could go to the old shelter-house on the golf links," +suggested Mr. Dick, looking me square in the eye. (I took the +hint, and Mrs. Dicky never knew he had been hidden there before.) + +"Nobody ever goes near it in winter." So I put on my slippers +again and we started through the snow across the golf links, Mr. +Dick carrying a bundle of firewood, and I leading the way with my +lantern. Twice I went into a drift to my waist, and once a +rabbit bunted into me head on, and would have scared me into a +chill if I hadn't been shaking already. The two behind me were +cheerful enough. Mr. Dick pointed out the general direction of +the deer park which hides the shelter-house from the sanatorium, +and if you'll believe it, with snow so thick I had to scrape it +off the lantern every minute or so, those children planned to +give something called A Midsummer Night's Dream in the deer +park among the trees in the spring, to entertain the +patients. + +"I wish to heaven I'd wake up and find all THIS a dream," I +called back over my shoulder. But they were busy with costumes +and getting some folks they knew from town to take the different +parts and they never even heard me. The last few yards they +snowballed each other and me. I tell you I felt a hundred years +old. + +We got into the shelter-house by my crawling through a window, +and when we had lighted the fire and hung up the lantern, it +didn't seem so bad. The place had been closed since summer, and +it seemed colder than outside, but those two did the barn dance +then and there. There were two rooms, and Mr. Dick had always +used the back one to hide in. It's a good thing Mrs. Dick was +not a suspicious person. Many a woman would have wondered when +she saw him lift a board in the floor and take out a rusty tin +basin, a cake of soap, a moldy towel, a can of sardines, a tooth- +brush and a rubber carriage robe to lay over the rafters under +the hole in the roof. But it's been my experience that the first +few days of married life women are blind because they want to +be and after that because they have to be. + +It was about four when I left them, sitting on a soap box in +front of the fire toasting sardines on the end of Mr. Dick's +walking-stick. Mrs. Dick made me put on her sealskin coat, and I +took the lantern, leaving them in the firelight. They'd gone +back to the captive balloon idea and were wondering if they +couldn't get it copyrighted! + +I took a short cut home, crawling through the barbed-wire fence +and going through the deer park. I was too tired and cold to +think. I stumbled down the hill to the house, and just before I +got to the corner I heard voices, and the shuffling of feet +through the snow. The next instant a lantern came around the +corner of the house. Mr. Thoburn was carrying it, and behind him +were the bishop, Mike the bath man, and Mr. Pierce. + +"It's like that man Moody," the bishop was saying angrily, "to +send the girl--" + +"Piffle !" snarled Mr. Thoburn. "If ever a woman was able to +take care of herself--" And then they saw me, and they all +stopped and stared. + +"Good gracious, girl!" said the bishop, with his dressing- +gown blowing out straight behind him in the wind. "We thought +you'd been buried in a drift!" + +"I don't see why!" I retorted defiantly. "Can't I go out to my +own spring-house without having a posse after me to bring me +back?" + +"Ordinarily," said Mr. Thoburn, with his snaky eyes on me, "I +think I may say that you might go almost anywhere without my +turning out to recover you. But Mrs. Moody is having hysterics." + +Mrs. Moody! I'd forgotten the Moodys! + +"She is convinced that you have drowned yourself, head down, in +the spring," Mr. Pierce said in his pleasant way. "You've been +gone two hours, you know." + +He took my arm and turned me toward the house. I was dazed. + +"In answer to your urgent inquiry," Mr. Thoburn called after me, +disagreeably, "Mr. Moody has not died. He is asleep. But, by +the way, where's the spring water?" + +I didn't answer him; I couldn't. We went into the house; Mrs. +Moody and Miss Cobb were sitting on the stairs. Mrs. Moody had +been crying, and Miss Cobb was feeding her the whisky I had +left, with a teaspoon. She had had a half tumblerful already and +was quite maudlin. She ran to me and put her arms around me. + +"I thought I was a murderess!" she cried. "Oh, the thought! +Blood on my soul! Why, Minnie Waters, wherever did you get that +sealskin coat!" + + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +DOLLY, HOW COULD YOU? + +I lay down across my bed at six o'clock that morning, but I was +too tired and worried to sleep, so at seven I got up and dressed. + +I was frightened when I saw myself in the glass. My eyes looked +like burnt holes in a blanket. I put on two pairs of stockings +and heavy shoes, for I knew I was going to do the Eskimo act +again that day and goodness knows how many days more, and then I +went down and knocked at the door of Miss Patty's room. She +hadn't been sleeping either. She called to me in an undertone to +come in, and she was lying propped up with pillows, with +something pink around her shoulders and the night lamp burning +beside the bed. She had a book in her hand, but all over the +covers and on the table at her elbow were letters in the blue +foreign envelopes with the red and black and gold seal. + +I walked over to the foot of the bed. + +"They're here," I said. + +She sat up, and some letters slid to the floor. + +"THEY'RE here!" she repeated. "Do you mean Dorothy?" + +"She and her husband. They came last night at five minutes to +twelve. Their train was held up by the blizzard and they won't +come in until they see you. They're hiding in the shelter-house +on the golf links." + +I think she thought I was crazy: I looked it. She hopped out of +bed and closed the door into her sitting-room--Mrs. Hutchins' +room opened off it--and then she came over and put her hand on my +arm. + +"Will you sit down and try to tell me just what you mean?" she +said. "How can my sister and her--her wretch of a husband have +come last night at midnight when I saw Mr. Carter myself not +later than ten o'clock?" + +Well, I had to tell her then about who Mr. Pierce was and why I +had to get him, and she understood almost at once. She was the +most understanding girl I ever met. She saw at once what Mr. Sam +wouldn't have known in a thousand years--that I wanted to +save the old place not to keep my position--but because I'd been +there so long, and my father before me, and had helped to make it +what it was and all that. And she stood there in her nightgown-- +she who was almost a princess--and listened to me, and patted me +on the shoulder when I broke down, telling her about Thoburn and +the summer hotel. + +"But here I am," I finished, "telling you about my troubles and +forgetting what I came for. You'll have to go out to the +shelter-house, Miss Patty. And I guess you're expected to fix it +up with your father." + +She stopped unfastening her long braids of hair. + +"Certainly I'll go to the shelter-house," she said, "and I'll +shake a little sense into Dorothy Jennings--the abominable little +idiot! But they needn't think I'm going to help them with +father; I wouldn't if I could, and I can't. He won't speak to +me. I'm in disgrace, Minnie." She gave her hair a shake, +twisted it into a rope and then a knot, and stuck a pin in it. +It was lovely: I wish Miss Cobb could have seen her. "You've +known father for years, Minnie: have you ever known him to be +so--so--" + +"Devilish" was the word she meant, but I finished for her. + +"Unreasonable?" I said. "Well, once before when you were a +little girl, he put his cane through a window in the spring- +house, because he thought it needed air. The spring-house, of +course, not the cane." + +"Exactly," she said, looking around the room, "and now he's +putting a cane through every plan I have made. Do you see my +heavy boots?" + +"It's like this," I remarked, bringing the boots from outside the +door, "if he's swallowed the prince and is choking on the +settlement question he might as well get over it. All those +foreigners expect pay for taking a wife. Didn't the chef here +want to marry Tillie, the diet cook, and didn't he want her to +turn over the three hundred dollars she had in the bank, and her +real estate, which was a sixth interest in a cemetery lot? But +Tillie stuck it out and he wouldn't take her without." + +"It isn't quite the same, Minnie," she said, sitting down on the +floor to put on her stockings. + +"The principle's the same," I retorted, "and if you ask me--" + +"I haven't," she said disagreeably, "and when you begin to argue, +Minnie, you make my head ache." + +"I have had a heartache for a week," I snapped, "let alone +heartburn, and I'll be glad when the Jennings family is safely +married and I can sleep at night." + +I was hurt. I went out and shut the door behind me, but I +stopped in the hall and went back. + +"I forgot to say," I began, and stopped. She was still sitting +on the floor, trying to put her heavy boots on, and crying all +over them. + +"Stop that instantly," I said, and jerked her shoes from her. +"Get into a chair and let me put them on. And if you will wait a +jiffy I'll bring you a cup of coffee. I'm not even a Christian +in the morning until I've had my coffee." + +"You haven't had it yet, have you?" she asked, and we laughed +together, rather shaky. But as I buttoned her shoes I saw her +eyes going toward the blue letters on the bed. + +"Oh, Minnie," she said, "if you only knew how peculiar they are +in Europe! They'll never allow a sanatorium in the family!" + +"I guess a good many would be the better for having one close," I +said. + +Well, I left her to get dressed and went to the kitchens. Tillie +was there getting the beef tea ready for the day, but none of the +rest was around. They knew the housekeeper was gone, but I guess +they'd forgotten that I was still on hand. I put a kettle +against the electric bell that rings in the chef's room so it +would keep on ringing and went on into the diet kitchen. + +"Tillie," I said, "can you trust me?" + +She looked up from her beef. + +"Whether I can or not, I always have," she answered. + +"Well, can I trust you? That's more to the point." + +She put down her knife and came over to me, with her hands on her +hips. + +"I don't know what you're up to, Minnie," she said, "and I don't +know that I care. But if you've forgotten the time I went to the +city and brought you sulphur and the Lord only knows what for +your old spring when you'd run short and were laid up with +influenza--" + +"Hush!" I exclaimed. "You needn't shout it. Tillie, I +don't want you to ask me any questions, but I want four raw eggs +in a basket, a pot of coffee and cream, some fruit if you can get +it when the chef unlocks the refrigerator room, and bread and +butter. They can make their own toast." + +"They?" she said, with her mouth open. + +But I didn't explain any more. I had found Tillie about a year +before, frying sausages at the railroad station, and made her +diet cook at the sanatorium. Mrs. Wiggins hadn't wanted her, +but, as I told the old doctor at the time, we needed somebody in +the kitchen to keep an eye on things for us. It was through +Tillie that we discovered that the help were having egg-nog twice +a day, with eggs as scarce as hens' teeth, and the pharmacy clerk +putting in a requisition for more whisky every week. + +Well, I scribbled a note to Mr. Van Alstyne, telling what had +happened, and put it under his door, and then I met Miss Patty in +the hall by the billiard room and I gave her some coffee from the +basket, in the sun parlor. It was still dark, although it was +nearly eight o'clock, and nobody saw us go out together. Just as +we left I heard the chef in the kitchen bawling out that he'd +murder whoever put the kettle against the bell, and Tillie +saying it must have dropped off the hook and landed there. + +We went to the spring-house first, to avoid suspicion, and then +across back of the deer park to the shelter-house. It was still +snowing, but not so much, and the tracks we had made early in the +morning were still there, mine off to one side alone, and the +others close together and side by side. There was a whole +history in those snow tracks, mine alone and kind of offish, and +the others cuddling together. It made me lonely to look at them. + +I remember wishing I'd taught school, as I was educated to; woman +wasn't made to live alone, and most school-teachers get married. + +Miss Patty did not say much. She was holding her chin high and +looking rather angry and determined. At the spring-house I gave +her the basket and took an armful of fire-wood myself. I knew +Mr. Dick would never think of it until the fire was out. + +They were both asleep in the shelter-house. He was propped up +against the wall on a box, with the rubber carriage robe around +him, and she was lying by the fire, with Mrs. Moody's shawl over +her and her muff under her head. Miss Patty stood in the +doorway for an instant. Then she walked over and, leaning down, +shook her sister by the arm. + +"Dorothy!" she said. "Wake up, you wretched child!" And shook +her again. + +Mrs. Dicky groaned and yawned, and opened her eyes one at a time. + +But when she saw it was Miss Patty she sat up at once, looking +dazed and frightened. + +"You needn't pinch me, Pat!" she said, and at that Mr. Dick +wakened and jumped up, with the carriage robe still around him. + +"Oh, Dolly, Dolly!" said Miss Patty suddenly, dropping on her +knees beside Mrs. Dicky, "what a bad little girl you are! What a +thing for you to do! Think of father and Aunt Honoria!" + +"I shan't," retorted Mrs. Dicky decidedly. "I'm not going to +spoil my honeymoon like that. For heaven's sake, Pat, don't cry. + +I'm not dead. Dick, this is my sister, Patricia." + +Miss Pat looked at him, but she didn't bow. She gave him one +look, from his head to his heels. + +"Dolly, how COULD you!" she said, and got up. + +It wasn't very comfortable for Mr. Dick, but he took it much +better than I expected. He went over and gave his wife a hand to +help her up, and still holding hers, he turned to Miss Patty. + +"You are perfectly right," he said, "I don't see how she could +myself. The more you know of me the more you'll wonder. But she +did; we're up against that." + +He grinned at Miss Patty, and after a minute Miss Patty smiled +back. But it wasn't much of a smile. I was unpacking the +breakfast, putting the coffee-pot on the fire and getting ready +to cook the eggs and make toast. But I was watching, too. +Suddenly Mrs. Dick made a dive for Miss Patty and threw her arms +around her. + +"You darling!" she cried. "I'm so glad to see you again--Pat, +you'll tell father, won't you? He'll take it from you. If I +tell him he'll have apoplexy or something." + +But Miss Patty set her pretty mouth--both those girls have their +father's mouth--and held her sister out at arm's length and +looked at her. + +"Listen," she said. "Do you know what you have done to me? Do +you know that when father knows this he's going to annul the +marriage or have Mr. Carter arrested for kidnaping or +abduction?--whatever it is." Mrs. Dick puckered her face to cry, +and Mr. Dick took a step forward, but Miss Patty waved him off. +"You know father as well as I do, Dolly. You know what he is, +and lately he's been awful. He's not well--it's his liver +again--and he won't listen to anything. Why, the Austrian +ambassador came up here, all this distance, to talk about the +etiquette of the--of my wedding, something about precedence, and +he wouldn't even see him." + +"He can't annul it," said Mr. Dick angrily. "I'm of age. And I +can support my wife, too, or will be able--soon." + +"Dolly's not of age," said Miss Patty wearily. "I've sat up all +night figuring it out. He's going to annul the marriage, or +he'll make a scandal anyhow, and that's just as bad. Dolly,"-- +she turned to her sister imploringly--"Dolly, I can't have a +scandal now. You know how Oskar's people have taken this, +anyhow; they've given in, because he insisted, but they don't +want me, and if there's a lot of notoriety now the emperor will +send him to Africa or some place, and--" + +"I wish they would!" Mrs. Carter burst out suddenly. "I hate the +whole thing. They only tolerate you--us--for our money. You +needn't look at me like that; Oskar may be all right, but his +mother and sisters are hateful--simply hateful!" + +"I'll not be with them." + +"No, but they'll be with you." Mrs. Dicky walked over to the +window and looked out, dabbing her eyes. "You've been everything +to me, Pat, and I'm so happy now--I'd rather be here on a soap +box with Dick than on a throne or a dais or whatever you'll have +to sit on over there, with Oskar. I want to be happy--and you +won't. Look at Alice Thorne and her duke!" + +"If you really want me to be happy," Miss Patty said, going over +to her, "you'll go back to school until the wedding is over." + +"I won't leave Dicky." She swung around and gave Mr. Dick an +adoring glance, and Miss Patty looked discouraged. + +"Take him with you," she said. "Isn't there some place near +where he could stay, and telephone you now and then?" + +"Telephone!" said Mrs. Dick scornfully. + +"Can't leave," Mr. Dick objected. "Got to be on the property." + +Miss Patty shrugged her shoulders and turned to go. "You're both +perfectly hopeless," she said. "I'll go and tell father, +Dorothy, but you know what will happen. You'll be back in school +at Greenwich by to-night, and your--husband will probably be +under arrest." She opened the door, but I dropped the toast I +was making and ran after her. + +"If he is arrested," I said, "they'll have to keep him on the +place. He can't leave." + +She didn't say anything; she lifted her hand and looked at the +ruby ring, and then she glanced back into the room where Mr. Dick +and his wife were whispering together, and turned up her coat +collar. + +"I'm going," she said, and stepped into the snow. But they +called her back in a hurry. + +"Look here, Miss--Miss Patricia," Mr. Dick said, "why can't we +stay here, where we are? It's very comfortable--that is, it's +livable. There's plenty of fresh air, anyhow, and everybody's +shouting for fresh air nowadays. They've got somebody to take my +place in the house." + +"And father needn't know a thing--you can fix that," broke +in Mrs. Dick. "And after your wedding he will be in a better +humor; he'll know it's over and not up to him any more." + +Miss Patty came back to the shelter-house again and sat down on +the soap box. + +"We MIGHT carry it off," she said. "If I could only go back +to town! But father is in one of his tantrums, and he won't go, +or let me go. The idea!--with Aunt Honoria on the long-distance +wire every day, having hysterics, and my clothes waiting to be +tried on and everything. I'm desperate." + +"And all sorts of things being arranged for you!" put in Mrs. +Dick enviously. "And the family jewels being reset in Vienna for +you and all that! It would be great--if you only didn't have to +take Oskar with the jewels!" + +Miss Patty frowned. + +"You are not going to marry him," she said, with a glance at Mr. +Dick, who, with his coat off, was lying flat on the floor, one +arm down in the hole where the things had been hidden, trying to +hook up a can of baked beans. "If it doesn't turn out well, you +and father have certainly done your part in the way of warning. +It's just as Aunt Honoria said; the family will make a +tremendous row beforehand, but afterward, when it all turns out +well, they'll take the credit." + +Mr. Dick was busy with the beans and I was turning the eggs. +Mrs. Dick went over to her sister and put her arm around her. + +"That's right, Patty," she said, "you're more like mother than I +am. I'm a Jennings all over--except that, heavens be praised, +I've got the Sherwood liver. I guess I'm common plebeian, like +dad, too. I'm plebeian enough, anyhow, to think there's been a +lot too much about marriage settlements and the consent of the +emperor in all this, and not enough about love." + +I could have patted Mrs. Dicky on the back for that, and I almost +upset the eggs into the fire. I'm an advocate of marrying for +love every time, although a title and a bunch of family jewels +thrown in wouldn't worry me. + +"Do you want me to protest that the man who has asked me to marry +him cares about me?" Miss Patty replied in an angry undertone. +"Couldn't he have married a thousand other girls! Hadn't a +marriage been arranged between him and the cousin--" + +"I know all that," Mrs. Dicky said, and her voice sounded older +than Miss Patty's, and motherly. "But--are you in love with him, +Pat?" + +"Certainly," Miss Patty said indignantly. "Don't be silly, +Dolly." + +At that instant Mr. Dick found the beans, and got up shouting +that we'd have a meal fit for a prince--if princes ate anything +so every day as baked beans. I put the eggs on a platter and +poured the coffee, and we all sat around the soap box and ate. I +wished that Miss Cobb could have seen me there--how they insisted +on my having a second egg, and was my coffee cold, and wasn't I +too close to the fire? It was Minnie here and Minnie there, and +me next to Miss Patty on the floor, and she, as you may say, +right next to royalty. I wished it could have been in the +spring-house, with father's crayon enlargement looking down on +us. + +Everybody felt better for the meal, and we were sitting there +laughing and talking and very cheerful when Mr. Van Alstyne +opened the door and looked in. His face was stern, but when +he saw us, with Miss Patty on her knees toasting a piece of bread +and Mr. Dicky passing the tin basin as a finger-bowl, he stopped +scowling and looked amused. + +"They're here, Sallie," he called to his wife, and they both came +in, covered with snow, and we had coffee and eggs all over again. + +Well, they stayed for an hour, and Mr. Sam talked himself black +in the face and couldn't get anywhere. For the Dickys refused to +be separated, and Mrs. Dick wouldn't tell her father, and Miss +Patty wouldn't do it for her, and the minute Mr. Sam made a +suggestion that sounded rational Mrs. Dick would cry and say she +didn't care to live, anyhow, and she wished she had died of +ptomaine poisoning the time she ate the bad oysters at school. + +So finally Mr. Sam gave up and said he washed his hands of the +whole affair, and that he was going to make another start on his +wedding journey, and if they wanted to be a pair of fools it +wasn't up to him--only for heaven's sake not to cry about it. +And then he wiped Mrs. Dicky's eyes and kissed her, she being, as +he explained, his sister-in-law now and much too pretty for him +to scold. + +And when the Dickys found they were not going to be separated we +had more coffee all around and everybody grew more cheerful. + +Oh, we were very cheerful! I look back now and think how +cheerful we were, and I shudder. It was strange that we hadn't +been warned by Mr. Pierce's square jaw, but we were not. We sat +around the fire and ate and laughed, and Mr. Dick arranged that +Mr. Pierce should come out to him every evening for orders about +the place if he accepted, and everybody felt he would--and I was +to come at the same time and bring a basket of provisions for the +next day. Of course, the instant Mr. Jennings left the young +couple could go into the sanatorium as guests under another name +and be comfortable. And as soon as the time limit was up, and +the place was still running smoothly, they could declare the +truth, claim the sanatorium, having fulfilled the conditions of +the will, and confess to Mr. Jennings--over the long-distance +wire. + +Well, it promised well, I must say. Mr. Stitt left on the ten +train that morning, looking lemon-colored and mottled. He +insisted that he wasn't able to go, but Mr. Sam gave him a +headache powder and put him on the train, anyhow. + +Yes, as I say, it promised well. But we made two mistakes: we +didn't count on Mr. Thoburn, and we didn't know Mr. Pierce. And +who could have imagined that Mike the bath man would do as he +did? + + + + + +CHAPTER X + +ANOTHER COMPLICATION + +After luncheon, when everybody at Hope Springs takes a nap, we +had another meeting at the shelter-house, this time with Mr. +Pierce. He had spent the morning tramping over the hills with a +gun and keeping out of the way of people, and what with three +square meals, a good night's sleep and the exercise, he was +looking a lot better. Seen in daylight, he had very dark hair +and blue-gray eyes and a very square chin, although it had a sort +of dimple in it. I used to wonder which won out, the dimple or +the chin, but I wasn't long in finding out. + +Well, he looked dazed when I took him to the shelter-house and he +saw Mr. Dick and Mrs. Dick and the Mr. Sams and Miss Patty. They +gave him a lawn-mower to sit on, and Mr. Sam explained the +situation. + +"I know it's asking a good bit, Mr. Pierce," he said, +"and personally I can see only one way out of all this. Carter +ought to go in and take charge, and his--er--wife ought to go +back to school. But they won't have it, and--er--there are other +reasons." He glanced at Miss Patty. + +Mr. Pierce also glanced at Miss Patty. He'd been glancing at her +at intervals of two seconds ever since she came in, and being a +woman and having a point to gain, Miss Patty seemed to have +forgotten the night before, and was very nice to him. Once she +smiled directly at him, and whatever he was saying died in his +throat of the shock. When she turned her head away he stared at +the back of her neck, and when she looked at the fire he gazed at +her profile, and always with that puzzled look, as if he hadn't +yet come to believe that she was the newspaper Miss Jennings. + +After everything had been explained to him, including Mr. +Jennings' liver and disposition, she turned to him and said: + +"We are in your hands, you see, Mr. Pierce. Are you going to +help us?" And when she asked him that, it was plain to me that +he was only sorry he couldn't die helping. + +"If everybody agrees to it," he said, looking at her, "and you +all think it's feasible and I can carry it off, I'm perfectly +willing to try." + +"Oh, it's feasible," Mr. Dick said in a relieved voice, getting +up and beginning to strut up and down the room. "It isn't as +though I'm beyond call. You can come out here and consult me if +you get stuck. And then there's Minnie; she knows a good bit +about the old place." + +Mr. Sam looked at me and winked. + +"Of course," said Mr. Dick, "I expect to retain control, you +understand that, I suppose, Pierce? You can come out every day +for instructions. I dare say sanatoriums are hardly your line." + +Mr. Pierce was looking at Miss Patty and she knew it. When a +woman looks as unconscious as she did it isn't natural. + +"Eh--oh, well no, hardly," he said, coming to himself; "I've +tried everything else, I believe. It can't be worse than +carrying a bunch of sweet peas from garden to garden." + +Mr. Dick stopped walking and turned suddenly to stare at Mr. +Pierce. + +"Sweet--what?" he said. + +Everybody else was talking, and I was the only one who saw him +change color. + +"Sweet peas," said Mr. Pierce. "And that reminds me--I'd like to +make one condition, Mr. Carter. I feel in a measure responsible +for the company; most of them have gone back to New York, but the +leading woman is sick at the hotel in Finleyville. I'd like to +bring her here for two weeks to recuperate. I assure you, I have +no interest in her, but I'm sorry for her; she's had the mumps." + +"Mumps!" everybody said together, and Mr. Sam looked at his +brother-in-law. + +"Kid in the play got 'em, and they spread around," Mr. Pierce +explained. "Nasty disease." + +"Why, you've just had them, too, Dicky!" said his wife. They all +turned to look at him, and I must say his expression was curious. + +Luckily, I had the wit to knock over the breakfast basket, which +was still there, and when we'd gathered up the broken china, Mr. +Dick had got himself in hand. + +"I'm sorry, old man," he said to Mr. Pierce, "but I'm not in +favor of bringing Miss--the person you speak of--up to the +sanatorium just now. Mumps, you know--very contagious, and all +that." + +"She's over that part," Mr. Pierce said; "she only needs to +rest." + +"Certainly--let her come," said Mrs. Dicky. "If they're as +contagious as all that, you haven't been afraid of MY getting +them." + +"I--I'm not in favor of it," Mr. Dick insisted, looking +obstinate. "The minute you bring an actress here you've got the +whole place by the ears." + +"Fiddlesticks!" said his sister. "Because any actress could set +YOU by the ears--" + +Mrs. Dick sat up suddenly. + +"Certainly, if she isn't well bring her up," said Miss Patty. +"Only--won't she know your name is not Carter?" + +"She's discretion itself," Mr. Pierce said. "Her salary hasn't +been paid for a month, and as I'm responsible, I'd be glad to see +her looked after." + +"I don't want her here. I'll--I'll pay her board at the hotel," +Mr. Dick began, "only for heaven's sake, don't--" + +He stopped, for every one was staring. + +"Why in the world would you do that?" Miss Patty asked. "Don't +be ridiculous. That's the only condition Mr. Pierce has made." + +Mr. Dick stalked to the window and looked out, his hands in his +pockets. I couldn't help being reminded of the time he had run +away from school, when his grandfather found him in the shelter- +house and gave him his choice of going back at once or reading +medicine with him. + +"Oh, bring her up! Bring her up!" he said without looking +around. "If Pierce won't stay unless he can play the friend in +need, all right. But don't come after me if the whole blamed +sanatorium swells up with mumps and faints at the sight of a +pickle." + +That was Wednesday. + +Things at the sanatorium were about the same on the surface. The +women crocheted and wondered what the next house doctor would be +like, and the men gambled at the slot-machines and played +billiards and grumbled at the food and the management, and when +they weren't drinking spring water they were in the bar washing +away the taste of it. They took twenty minutes on the verandas +every day for exercise and kept the house temperature at eighty. +Senator Biggs was still fasting and Mrs. Biggs took to spending +all day in the spring-house and turning pale every time she heard +his voice. It was that day, I think, that I found the +magazine with Upton Sinclair's article on fasting stuck fast in a +snow-drift, as if it had been thrown violently. + +Wednesday afternoon Miss Julia Summers came with three lap robes, +a white lace veil and a French poodle in a sleigh and went to bed +in one of the best rooms, and that night we started to move out +furniture to the shelter-house. + +By working almost all night we got the shelter-house fairly +furnished, although we made a trail through the snow that looked +like a fever chart. Toward daylight Mr. Sam dropped a wash-bowl +on my toe and I went to bed with an arnica compress. + +I limped out in time to be on hand before Miss Cobb got there, +but what with a chilblain on my heel and hardly any sleep for two +nights--not to mention my toe--I wasn't any too pleasant. + +"It's my opinion you're overeating, Minnie," Miss Cobb said. +"You're skin's a sight!" + +"You needn't look at it," I retorted. + +She burned the back of her neck just then and it was three +minutes before she could speak. When she could she was +considerably milder. + +"Just give it a twist or two, Minnie, won't you?" she said, +holding out the curler. "I haven't been able to sleep on the +back of my head for three weeks." + +Well, I curled her hair for her and she told me about Miss +Summers being still shut in her room, and how she'd offered Mike +an extra dollar to give the white poodle a Turkish bath--it being +under the weather as to health--and how Mike had soaked the +little beast for an hour in a tub of water, forgetting the +sulphur, and it had come out a sort of mustard color, and how +Miss Summers had had hysterics when she saw it. + +"Mike dipped him in bluing to bleach him again, or rather `her'-- +it's name is Arabella--" Miss Cobb said, "but all it did was to +make it mottled like an Easter egg. Everybody is charmed. There +were no dogs allowed while the old doctor lived. Things were +different." + +"Yes, things were different," I assented, limping over to heat +the curler. "How--how does Mr. Carter get along?" + +Miss Cobb put down her hand-mirror and sniffed. + +"Well," she said, "goodness knows I'm no trouble maker, but +somebody ought to tell that young man a few things. He's +forever looking at the thermometer and opening windows. I +declare, if I hadn't brought my woolen tights along I'd have +frozen to death at breakfast. Everybody's complaining." + +I put that away in my mind to speak about. It was only by +nailing the windows shut and putting strips of cotton batting +around the cracks that we'd ever been able to keep people there +in the winter. I had my first misgiving then. Heaven knows I +didn't realize what it was going to be. + +Well, by the evening of that day things were going fairly well. +Tillie brought out a basket every morning to me at the spring- +house, fairly bursting with curiosity, and Mr. Sam got some +canned stuff in Finleyville and took it after dark to the +shelter-house. But after the second day Mrs. Dicky got tired +holding a frying-pan over the fire and I had to carry out at +least one hot meal a day. + +They got their own breakfast in a chafing-dish, or rather he got +it and carried it to her. And she'd sit on the edge of her cot, +with her feet on the soap box--the floor was drafty--wrapped in a +pink satin negligee with bands of brown fur on it, looking +sweet and perfectly happy, and let him feed her boiled egg with a +spoon. I took them some books--my Gray's Anatomy, and Jane +Eyre and Molly Bawn, by The Duchess, and the newspapers, of +course. They were full of talk about the wedding, and the suite +the prince was bringing over with him, and every now and then a +notice would say that Miss Dorothy Jennings, the bride's young +sister, who was still in school and was not coming out until next +year, would be her sister's maid of honor. And when they came to +that, they would hug each other--or me, if I happened to be +close--and act like a pair of children, which they were. +Generally it would end up by his asking her if she wasn't sorry +she wasn't back at Greenwich studying French conjugations and +having a dance without any men on Friday nights, and she would +say "Wretch!" and kiss him, and I'd go out and slam the door. + +But there was something on Mr. Dick's mind. I hadn't known him +for fourteen years for nothing. And the night Mr. Sam and I +carried out the canned salmon and corn and tomatoes he walked +back with me to the edge of the deer park, Mr. Sam having gone +ahead. + +"Now," I said, when we were out of ear-shot, "spit it out. I've +been expecting it." + +"Listen, Minnie," he answered, "is Ju--is Miss Summers still +confined to her room?" + +"No," I replied coldly. "Ju--Miss Summers was down to-night to +dinner." + +"Then she's seen Pierce," he said, "and he's told her the whole +story and by to-morrow--" + +"What?" I demanded, clutching his arm. "You wretched boy, don't +tell me after all I've done" + +"Oh, confound it, Minnie," he exclaimed, "it's as much your fault +as mine. Couldn't you have found somebody else, instead of +getting, of all things on earth, somebody from the Sweet Peas +Company?" + +"I see," I said slowly. "Then it WASN'T coincidence about the +mumps!" + +"Confounded kid had them," he said with bitterness. "Minnie, +something's got to be done, and done soon. If you want the plain +truth, Miss--er--Summers and I used to be friends--and--well, +she's suing me for breach of promise. Now for heaven's sake, +Minnie, don't make a fuss--" + +But my knees wouldn't hold me. I dropped down in a snow-drift +and covered my face. + + + +CHAPTER XI + +MISS PATTY'S PRINCE + +I dragged myself back to the spring-house and dropped in front of +the fire. What with worry and no sleep and now this new +complication I was dead as yesterday's newspaper. I sat there on +the floor with my hands around my knees, thinking what to do +next, and as I sat there, the crayon enlargement of father on the +spring-house wall began to shake its head from side to side, and +then I saw it hold out its hand and point a finger at me. + +"Cut and run, Minnie," it said. "Get out from under! Go and buy +Timmon's candy store before the smash--the smash--!" + +When I opened my eyes Mr. Pierce was sitting on the other side of +the chimney and staring at the fire. He had a pipe between his +teeth, but he wasn't smoking, and he had something of the same +look about his mouth he'd had the first day I saw him. + +"Well?" he said, when he saw I was awake. + +"I guess I was sleeping." I sat up and pushed in my hairpins and +yawned. I was tireder than ever. "I'm clean worn out." + +"Of course you're tired," he declared angrily. "You're not a +horse, and you haven't been to bed for two nights." + +"Care killed the cat," I said. "I don't mind losing sleep, but +it's like walking in a swamp, Mr. Pierce. First I put a toe in-- +that was when I asked you to stay over night. Then I went a step +farther, lured on, as you may say, by Miss Patty waving a crown +or whatever it is she wants, just beyond my nose. And to-night +I've got a--well, to-night I'm in to the neck and yelling for a +quick death." + +He leaned over to where I sat before the fire and twisted my head +toward him. + +"To-night--what?" he demanded. + +But that minute I made up my mind not to tell him. He might +think the situation was too much for him and leave, or he might +decide he ought to tell Miss Summers where Dick was. There was +no love lost between him and Mr. Carter. + +"To-night--I'm just tired and cranky," I said, "so--is Miss +Summers settled yet?" + +He nodded, as if he wasn't thinking of Miss Summers. + +"What did you tell her?" + +"Haven't seen her," he said. "Sent her a note that I was +understudying a man named Carter and to mind to pick up her +cues." + +"It's a common enough name," I said, but he had lighted his pipe +again and had dropped forward, one elbow on his knee, his hand +holding the bowl of his pipe, and staring into the fire. He +looked up when I closed and locked the pantry door. + +"I've just been thinking," he remarked, "here we are--a group of +people--all struggling like mad for one thing, but with different +motives. Mine are plain enough and mercenary enough, although a +certain red-haired girl with a fine loyalty to an old doctor and +a sanatorium is carrying me along with her enthusiasm. And Van +Alstyne's motives are clear enough--and selfish. Carter is +merely trying to save his own skin--but a girl like Miss Pat-- +Miss Jennings!" + +"There's nothing uncertain about what she wants, or wrong +either," I retorted. "She's right enough. The family can't +stand a scandal just now with her wedding so close." + +He smiled and got up, emptying his pipe. + +"Nevertheless, oh, Minnie, of the glowing hair and heart," he +said, "Miss Jennings has disappointed me. You see, I believe in +marrying for love." + +"Love!" I was disgusted. "Don't talk to me about love! Love is +the sort of thing that makes two silly idiots run away and get +married and live in a shelter-house, upsetting everybody's plans, +while their betters have to worry themselves sick and carry them +victuals." + +He got up and began to walk up and down the spring-house, +scowling at the floor. + +"Of course," he agreed, "he may be a decent sort, and she may +really want him." + +"Of course she does!" I said. He stopped short. "I've been +wanting a set of red puffs for three years, and I can hardly walk +past Mrs. Yost's window down in the village. They've got some +that match my hair and I fairly yearn for them. But if I got 'em +I dare say I'd put them in a box and go after wanting something +else. It's the same way with Miss Patty. She'll get her +prince, and because it isn't real love, but only the same as me +with the puffs, she'll go after wanting something else. Only she +can't put him away in a box. She'll have to put him on and wear +him for better, for worse." + +"Lord help her!" he said solemnly, and went over to the window +and stood there looking out. + +I went over beside him. From the window we could see the three +rows of yellow lights that marked the house, and somebody with a +lantern was going down the path toward the stables. Mr. Pierce +leaned forward, his hands at the top of the window-sash, and put +his forehead against the glass. + +"Why is it that a lighted window in a snow-storm always makes a +fellow homesick?" he said in his half-mocking way. "If he hasn't +got a home it makes him want one." + +"Well, why don't you get one?" I asked. + +"On nothing a year?" he said. "Not even prospects! And set up +housekeeping in the shelter-house with my good friend Minnie +carrying us food and wearing herself to a shadow, not to mention +bringing trashy books to my bride" + +"She isn't that kind," I broke in, and got red. I'd been +thinking of Miss Patty. But he went over to the table and picked +up his glass of spring water, only to set it down untasted. + +"No, she's not that kind!" he agreed, and never noticed the slip. + +"You know, Minnie, women aren't all alike, but they're not all +different. An English writer has them classified to a T--there's +the mother woman--that's you. You're always mothering somebody +with that maternal spirit of yours. It's a pity it's vicarious." + +I didn't say anything, not knowing just what he meant. But I've +looked it up since and I guess he was about right. + +"And there's the mistress woman--Mrs. Dicky, for example, or--" +he saw Miss Cobb's curler on the mantel and picked it up--"or +even Miss Cobb," he said. "Coquetry and selfishness without +maternal instinct. How much of Miss Cobb's virtue is training +and environment, Minnie, not to mention lack of temptation, and +how much was born in her?" + +"She's a preacher's daughter," I remarked. I could understand +about Mrs. Dicky, but I thought he was wrong about Miss Cobb. + +"Exactly," he said. "And the third kind of woman is the +mistress-mother kind, and they're the salt of the earth, Minnie." +He began to walk up and down by the spring with his hands in his +pockets and a far-away look in his eyes. "The man who marries +that kind of woman is headed straight for paradise." + +"That's the way!" I snapped. "You men have women divided into +classes and catalogued like horses on sale." + +"Aren't they on sale?" he demanded, stopping. "Isn't it money, +or liberty, or--or a title, usually?" I knew he was thinking of +Miss Patty again. + +"As for the men," I continued, "I guess you can class the married +ones in two classes, providers and non-providers. They're all +selfish and they haven't enough virtue to make a fuss about." + +"I'd be a shining light in the non-provider class," he said, and +picking up his old cap he opened the door. Miss Patty herself +was coming up the path. + +She was flushed from the cold air and from hurrying, and I don't +know that I ever saw her look prettier. When she came into the +light we could both see that she was dressed for dinner. Her fur +coat was open at the neck, and she had only a lace <133>scarf +over her head. (She was a disbeliever in colds, anyhow, and all +winter long she slept with the windows open and the steam-heat +off!) + +"I'm so glad you're still here, Minnie!" she exclaimed, breathing +fast. "You haven't taken the dinner out to the shelter-house +yet, have you?" + +"Not yet," I replied. "Tillie hasn't brought the basket. The +chef's been fussing about the stuff we're using in the diet +kitchen the last few days, and I wouldn't be surprised if he's +shut off all extras." + +But I guess her sister and Mr. Dick could have starved to death +just then without her noticing. She was all excitement, for all +she's mostly so cool. + +"I have a note here for my sister," she said, getting it out of +her pocket. "I know we all impose on you, Minnie, but--will you +take it for me? I'd go, but I'm in slippers, and, anyhow, I'd +need a lantern, and that would be reckless, wouldn't it?" + +"In slippers!" Mr. Pierce interrupted. "It's only five degrees +above zero! Of all the foolhardy--!" + +Miss Patty did not seem to hear him. She gave the letter to me +and followed me out on the step. + +"You're a saint, Minnie," she said, leaning over and +squeezing my arm, "and because you're going back and forth in the +cold so much, I want you to have this--to keep." + +She stooped and picked up from the snow beside the steps +something soft and furry and threw it around my neck, and the +next instant I knew she was giving me her chinchilla set, muff +and all. I was so pleased I cried, and all the way over to the +shelter-house I sniveled and danced with joy at the same time. +There's nothing like chinchilla to tone down red hair. + +Well, I took the note out to the shelter-house, and rapped. Mr. +Dick let me in, and it struck me he wasn't as cheerful as usual. +He reached out and took the muff. + +"Oh," he said, "I thought that was the supper." + +"It's coming," I said, looking past him for Mrs. Dicky. Usually +when I went there she was drawing Mr. Dick's profile on a bit of +paper or teaching him how to manicure his nails, but that night +she was lying on the cot and she didn't look up. + +"Sleeping?" I asked in a whisper. + +"Grumping!" Mr. Dick answered. He went over and stood looking +down at her with his hands in his pockets and his hair +ruffled as if he'd been running his fingers through it. She +never moved a shoulder. + +"Dorothy," he said. "Here's Minnie." + +She pretended not to hear. + +"Dorothy!" he repeated. "I wish you wouldn't be such a g-- +Confound it, Dolly, be reasonable. Do you want to make me look +like a fool?" + +She turned her face enough to uncover one eye. + +"It wouldn't be difficult," she answered, staring at him with the +one eye. It was red from crying. + +"Now listen, Dolly." He got down on one knee beside the cot and +tried to take her hand, but she jerked it away. "I've tried +wearing my hair that way, and it--it isn't becoming, to say the +least. I don't mind having it wet and brushed back in a +pompadour, if you insist, but I certainly do balk at the ribbon." + +"You've only got to wear the ribbon an hour or so, until it +dries." She brought her hand forward an inch or so and he took +it and kissed it. It should have been slapped. + +"I'll tell you what I'll do," he said. "You can fix it any way +you please, when it's too late for old Sam or Pierce to drop +in, and I'll wear the confounded ribbon all night. Won't that +do?" + +But she had seen the note and sat up and held out her hand for +it. She was wearing one of Miss Patty's dresses and it hung on +her--not that Miss Patty was large, but she had a beautiful +figure, and Mrs. Dicky, of course, was still growing and not +properly filled out. + +"Dick!" she said suddenly, "what do you think? Oskar is here! +Pat's in the wildest excitement. He's in town, and Aunt Honoria +has telephoned to know what to do! Listen: he is incog., of +course, and registered as Oskar von Inwald. He did an awfully +clever thing--came in through Canada while the papers thought he +was in St. Moritz." + +"For heaven's sake," replied Mr. Dick, "tell her not to ask him +here. I shouldn't know how to talk to him." + +"He speaks lovely English," declared Mrs. Dick, still reading. + +"I know all that," he said, walking around nervously, "but if +he's going to be my brother-in-law, I suppose I don't get down on +my knees and knock my head on the floor. What do I say to him? +Four Highness? Oh, I've known a lord or two, but that's +different. You call them anything you like and lend them money." + +"I dare say you can with Oskar, too." Mrs. Dicky put the note +down and sighed. "Well, he's coming. Pat says dad won't go back +to town until he's had twenty-one baths, and he's only had eleven +and she's got to stay with him. And you needn't worry about what +to call Oskar. He's not to know we're here." + +I was worried on my way back to the spring-house--not that the +prince would make much difference, as far as I could see things +being about as bad as they could be. But some of the people were +talking of leaving, and since we had to have a prince it seemed a +pity he wasn't coming with all his retinue and titles. It would +have been a good ten thousand dollars' worth of advertising for +the place, and goodness knows we needed it. + +When I got back to the spring-house Miss Patty and Mr. Pierce +were still there. He was in front of the fire, with his back to +it, and she was near the door. + +"Of course it isn't my affair," he was saying. "You are +perfectly--" Then I opened the door and he stopped. I went +on into the pantry to take off my overshoes, and as I closed the +door he continued. "I didn't mean to say what I have. I meant +to explain about the other night--I had a right to do that. But +you forced the issue." + +"I was compelled to tell you he was coming," she said angrily. +"I felt I should. You have been good enough to take Mr. Carter's +place here and save me from an embarrassing situation--" + +"I had no philanthropic motives," he insisted stubbornly. "I did +it, as you must know, for three meals a day and a roof over my +head. If you wish me to be entirely frank, I disapprove of the +whole thing." + +I heard the swish of her dress as she left the door and went +toward him. + +"What would you have had me do?" she asked. + +"Take those two children to your father. What if there was a +row? Why should there be such a lot made of it, anyhow? They're +young, but they'll get older. It isn't a crime for two people +to--er--love each other, is it? And if you think a scandal or +two in your family--granting your father would make a +scandal--is going to put another patch on the ragged reputations +of the royal family of--" + +"How dare you!" she cried furiously. "How DARE you!" + +I heard her cross the room and fling the door open and a second +later it slammed. When I came out of the pantry Mr. Pierce was +sitting in his old position, elbow on knee, holding his pipe and +staring at the bowl. + + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +WE GET A DOCTOR + +I had my hands full the next day. We'd had another snow-storm +during the night and the trains were blocked again. About ten +o'clock we got a telegram from the new doctor we'd been +expecting, that he'd fallen on the ice on his way to the train +and broken his arm, and at eleven a delegation from the guests +waited on Mr. Pierce and told him they'd have to have a house +physician at once. + +Senator Biggs was the spokesman. He said that, personally, he +couldn't remain another day without one; that he should be under +a physician's care every moment of his fast, and that if no +doctor came that day he'd be in favor of all the guests showing +their displeasure by leaving together. + +"Either that," Thoburn said from the edge of the crowd, "or call +it a hotel at once and be done with it. A sanatorium +without a doctor is like an omelet without eggs!" + +"Hamlet without ham," somebody said. + +"We're doing the best we can," Mr. Pierce explained. "We--we +expect a doctor to-day." + +"When?" from Mr. Jennings, who had come on a cane and was +watching Mr. Pierce like a hawk. + +"This afternoon, probably. As there is no one here very ill--" + +But at that they almost fell on him and tore him to pieces. I +had to step in front of him myself and say we'd have somebody +there by two o'clock if we had to rob a hospital to get him. And +Mr. Sam cried, "Three cheers for Minnie, the beautiful spring- +house girl!" and led off. + +There's no doubt about it--a man ought to be born to the +sanatorium business. A real strong and healthy man has no +business trying to run a health resort, and I saw Mr. Pierce +wasn't making the hit that I'd expected him to. + +He was too healthy. You only needed to look at him to know that +he took a cold plunge every morning, and liked to walk ten miles +a day, and could digest anything and go to sleep the minute his +head touched the pillow. And he had no tact. When Mrs. +Biggs went to him and explained that the vacuum cleaner must not +be used in her room--that it exhausted the air or something, and +she could hardly breathe after it--he only looked bewildered and +then drew a diagram to show her it was impossible that it could +exhaust the air. The old doctor knew how: he'd have ordered an +oxygen tank opened in the room after the cleaner was used and +she'd have gone away happy. + +Of course Mr. Pierce was most polite. He'd listen to their +complaints--and they were always complaining, that's part of the +regime--with a puzzled face, trying to understand, but he +couldn't. He hadn't a nerve in his body. Once, when one of the +dining-room girls dropped a tray of dishes and half the women +went to bed with headache from the nervous shock, he never even +looked up, but went on with his dinner, and the only comment he +made afterward was to tell the head waitress to see that Annie +didn't have to pay breakage--that the trays were too heavy for a +woman, anyhow. As Miss Cobb said, he was impossible. + +Well, as if I didn't have my hands full with getting meals +to the shelter-house, and trying to find a house doctor, and +wondering how long it would be before "Julia" came face to face +with Dick Carter somewhere or other, and trying to keep one eye +on Thoburn while I kept Mr. Pierce straight with the other--that +day, during luncheon, Mike the bath man came out to the spring- +house and made a howl about his wages. He'd been looking surly +for two days. + +"What about your wages?" I snapped. "Aren't you getting what +you've always had?" + +"No tips!" he said sulkily. "Only a few taking baths--only one +daily, and that's that man Jennings. There's no use talking, +Miss Minnie, I've got to have a double percentage on that man or +you'll have to muzzle him. He--he's dangerous." + +"If I give you the double percentage, will you stay?" + +"I don't know but that I'd rather have the muzzle, Miss Minnie," +he answered slowly, "but--I'll stay. It won't be for long." + +Which left me thinking. I'd seen Thoburn talking to Mike more +than once lately, and he'd been going around with an air of +assurance that didn't make me any too cheerful. Evenings, +when I'd relieved Amanda King at the news stand, I'd seen Thoburn +examining the woodwork of the windows, and only the night before, +happening on the veranda unexpectedly, I found Mike and him +measuring it with a tape line. As I say, Mike's visit left me +thinking. + +The usual crowd came out that afternoon and drank water and sat +around the fire and complained--all except Senator Biggs, who +happened in just as I was pouring melted butter over a dish of +hot salted pop-corn. He stood just inside the door, sniffling, +with his eyes fixed on the butter, and then groaned and went out. + +He looked terrible--his clothes hung on him like bags; as the +bishop said, it was ghastly to see a convexity change to such a +concavity in three days. + +Mr. Moody won three dollars that day from the slot-machine and +was almost civil to his wife, but old Jennings sat with his foot +on a stool and yelled if anybody slammed the door. Mrs. Hutchins +brought him out with her eyes red and asked me if she could leave +him there. + +"I'm sorry if I was rude to you the other night, Minnie," +she said, "but I was upset. I'm so worn-out that I'll have to +lie down for an hour, and if he doesn't get better soon, I--I +shall have to have help. My nerves are gone." + +At four o'clock Mr. Sam came in, and he had Mr. Thoburn tight by +the arm. + +"My dear old chap," he was saying, "it would be as much as your +life's worth. That ground is full of holes and just now covered +with snow--!" + +He caught my eye, and wiped his forehead. + +"Heaven help us!" he said, coming over to the spring, "I found +him making for the shelter-house, armed with a foot rule! +Somebody's got to take him in hand--I tell you, the man's a +menace!" + +"What about the doctor?" I asked, reaching up his glass. + +"Be here to-night," he answered, "on the--" + +But at that minute a boy brought a telegram down and handed it to +him. The new doctor was laid up with influenza! + +We sat there after the others had gone, and Mr. Sam said he was +for giving up the fight, only to come out now with the truth +would mean such a lot of explaining and a good many people would +likely find it funny. Mr. Pierce came in later and we gave +him the telegram to read. + +"I don't see why on earth they need a doctor, anyhow," he said, +"they're not sick. If they'd take a little exercise and get some +air in their lungs--" + +"My dear fellow," Mr. Sam cried in despair, "some people are born +in sanatoriums, some acquire them, and others have them thrust +upon them--I've had this place thrust upon me. I don't know why +they want a doctor, but they do. They balked at Rodgers from the +village. They want somebody here at night. Mr. Jennings has the +gout and there's the deuce to pay. Some of them talk of +leaving." + +"Let 'em leave," said Mr. Pierce. "If they'd go home and drink +three gallons of any kind of pure water a day--" + +"Sh! That's heresy here! My dear fellow, we've got to keep +them." + +Mr. Pierce glanced at the telegram and handed it back. + +"Lot's of starving M. D.'s would jump at the chance," he said, +"but if it's as urgent as all this we can't wait to hunt. I'll +tell you, Van Alstyne, there's a chap down in the village he was +the character man with the Sweet Peas Company--and he's +stranded there. I saw him this morning. He's washing dishes in +the depot restaurant for his meals. We used to call him Doc, and +I've a hazy idea that he's a graduate M. D.--name's Barnes." + +"Great!" cried Mr. Van Alstyne. "Let's have Barnes. You get +him, will you, Pierce?" + +Mr. Pierce promised and they started out together. At the door +Mr. Sam turned. + +"Oh, by the way, Minnie," he called, "better gild one of your +chairs and put a red cushion on it. The prince has arrived." + +Well, I thought it all out that afternoon as I washed the +glasses, and it was terrible. I had two people in the shelter- +house to feed and look after like babies, with Tillie getting +more curious every day about the basket she brought, and not to +be held much longer; and I had a man running the sanatorium and +running it to the devil as fast as it could go. Not that he +wasn't a nice young man, big, strong-jawed and all that, but you +can't make a diplomat out of an ordinary man in three days, and +it takes more diplomacy to run a sanatorium a week than it does +to be secretary of state for four years. Then I had a +prince incognito, and Thoburn stirring up mischief, and the +servants threatening to strike, and no house doctor-- + +Just as I got to that somebody opened the door behind me and +looked in. I glanced around, and it was a man with the reddest +hair I ever saw. Mine was pale by comparison. He was rather +short and heavy-set, and he had a pleasant face, although not +handsome, his nose being slightly bent to the left. But at first +all I could see was his hair. + +"Good evening," he said, edging himself in. "Are you Miss +Waters?" + +"Yes," I said, rising and getting a glass ready, "although I'm +not called that often, except by people who want to pun on my +name and my business." I looked at him sharply, but he hadn't +intended any pun. + +He took off his hat and came over to the spring where I was +filling his glass. + +"If that's for me, you needn't bother," he said. "If it tastes +as it smells, I'm not thirsty. My name's Barnes, and I was to +wait here for Mr. Van Alstyne." + +"Barnes!" I repeated. "Then you're the doctor." + +He grinned, and stood turning his hat around in his hands. + +"Not exactly," he said. "I graduated in medicine a good many +years ago, but after a year of it, wearing out more seats of +trousers waiting for patients than I earned enough to pay for, +and having to have new trousers, I took to other things." + +"Oh, yes," I said. "You're an actor now." + +He looked thoughtful. + +"Some people think I'm not," he answered, "but I'm on the stage. +Graduated there from prize-fighting. Prize-fighting, the stage, +and then writing for magazines--that's the usual progression. +Sometimes, as a sort of denouement before the final curtain, we +have dinner at the White House." + +I took a liking to the man at once. It was a relief to have +somebody who was willing to tell all about himself and wasn't +incognito, or in hiding, or under somebody else's name. I put a +fresh log on the fire, and as it blazed up I saw him looking at +me. + +"Ye gods and little fishes!" he said. "Another redhead! Why, +we're as alike as two carrots off the same bunch!" + +In five minutes I knew how old he was, and where he was +raised, and that what he wanted more than anything on earth was a +little farmhouse with chickens and a cow. + +"Where you can have air, you know," he said, waving his hands, +which were covered with reddish hair. "Lord, in the city I +starve for air! And where, when you're getting soft you can go +out and tackle the wood-pile. That's living!" + +And then he wanted to know what he was to do at the sanatorium +and I told him as well as I could. I didn't tell him everything, +but I explained why Mr. Pierce was calling himself Carter, and +about the two in the shelter-house. I had to. He knew as well +as I did that three days before Mr. Pierce had had nothing to his +name but a folding automobile road map or whatever it was. + +"Good for old Pierce!" he said when I finished. "He's a prince, +Miss Waters. If you'd seen him sending those girls back to +town--well, I'll do all I can to help him. But I'm not much of a +doctor. It's safe to acknowledge it; you'll find it out soon +enough." + +Mr. and Mrs. Van Alstyne came in just then, and Mr. Sam told him +what he was expected to do. It wasn't much: he was to tell +them at what temperatures to take their baths, "and Minnie will +help you out with that," he added, and what they were to eat and +were not to eat. "Minnie will tell you that, too," he finished, +and Mr. Barnes, DOCTOR Barnes, came over and shook my hand. + +"I'm perfectly willing to be first assistant," he declared. +"We'll put our heads together and the result will be--" + +"Combustion!" said Mr. Sam, and we all laughed. + +"Remember," Mr. Sam instructed him, as Doctor Barnes started out, +"when you don't know what to prescribe, order a Turkish bath. +The baths are to a sanatorium what the bar is to a club--they pay +the bills." + +Well, we got it all fixed and Doctor Barnes started out, but at +the door he stopped. + +"I say," he asked in an undertone, "the stork doesn't light +around here, does he?" + +"Not if they see him first!" I replied grimly, and he went out. + + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +THE PRINCE--PRINCIPALLY + +It was all well enough for me to say--as I had to to Tillie many +a time--that it was ridiculous to make a fuss over a person for +what, after all, was an accident of birth. It was well enough +for me to say that it was only by chance that I wasn't strutting +about with a crown on my head and a man blowing a trumpet to let +folks know I was coming, and by the same token and the same +chance Prince Oskar might have been a red-haired spring-house +girl, breaking the steels in her figure stooping over to ladle +mineral water out of a hole in the earth. + +Nevertheless, at five o'clock, after every one had gone, when I +saw Miss Patty, muffled in furs, tripping out through the snow, +with a tall thin man beside her, walking very straight and taking +one step to her four, I felt as though somebody had hit me at the +end of my breast-bone. + +They stopped a minute outside before they came in, and I had to +take myself in hand. + +"Now look here, Minnie, you idiot," I said to myself, "this is +America; you're as good as he is; not a bend of the knee or a +stoop of the neck. And if he calls you `my good girl' hit him." + +They came in together, laughing and talking, and, to be honest, +if I hadn't caught the back of a chair, I'd have had one foot +back of the other and been making a courtesy in spite of myself. + +"We're late, Minnie!" Miss Patty said. "Oskar, this is one of my +best friends, and you are to be very nice to her." + +He had one of those single glass things in his eye and he gave me +a good stare through it. Seen close he was handsomer than Mr. +Pierce, but he looked older than his picture. + +"Ask her if she won't be nice to me," he said in as good English +as mine, and held out his hand. + +"Any of Miss Patty's friends--" I began, with a lump in my +throat, and gave his hand a good squeeze. I thought he looked +startled, and suddenly I had a sort of chill. + +"Good gracious!" I exclaimed, "should I have kissed it?" + +They roared at that, and Miss Patty had to sit down in a chair. + +"You see, she knows, Oskar," she said. "The rest are thinking +and perhaps guessing, but Minnie is the only one that knows, and +she never talks. Everybody who comes here tells Minnie his +troubles." + +"But--am I a trouble?" he asked in a low tone. I was down in the +spring, but I heard it. + +"So far you have hardly been an unalloyed joy," she replied, and +from the spring I echoed "Amen." + +"Yes--I'm so hung with family skeletons that I clatter when I +walk," I explained, pretending I hadn't heard, and brought them +both glasses of water. "It's got to be a habit with some people +to save their sciatica and their husband's dispositions and their +torpid livers and their unpaid bills and bring 'em here to me." + +He sniffed at the glass and put it down. + +"Herr Gott!" he said, "what a water! It is--the whole thing is +extraordinary! I can understand the reason for Carlsbad or +Wiesbaden--it is gay. One sees one's friends; it is--social. +But here--!" + +He got up and, lifting a window curtain, peered out into the +snow. + +"Here," he repeated, "shut in by forests and hills, a thousand +miles from life--" He shrugged his shoulders and came back to +the table. "It is well enough for the father," he went on to +Miss Patty, "but for you! Why--it is depressing, gray. The only +bit of color in it all is--here, in what you call the spring- +house." I thought he meant Miss Patty's cheeks or her lovely +violet eyes, but he was looking at my hair. I had caught his eye +on it before, but this time he made no secret about it, and he +sighed, for all the world as if it reminded him of something. He +went over to the slot-machine and stood in front of it, humming +and trying the different combinations. I must say he had a nice +back. + +Miss Patty came over and slipped her hand in mine. + +"Well?" she whispered, looking at me with her pretty eyebrows +raised. + +"He looks all right," I had to confess. "Perhaps you can coax +him to shave." + +She laughed. + +"Oskar!" she called, "you have passed, but you are conditioned. +Minnie objects to the mustache." + +He turned and looked at me gravely. + +"It is my--greatest attraction," he declared, "but it is also a +great care. If Miss Minnie demands it, I shall give it to her in +a--in a little box." He sauntered over and looked at me in his +audacious way. "But you must promise to care for it. Many women +have loved it." + +"I believe that!" I answered, and stared back at him without +blinking. "I guess I wouldn't want the responsibility." + +But I had an idea that he meant what he said about the many +women, and that Miss Patty knew it as well as I did. She flushed +a little, and they went very soon after that. I stood and +watched them until they disappeared in the snow, and I felt +lonelier than ever, and sad, although certainly he was better +than I had expected to find him. He was a man, and not a little +cub with a body hardly big enough to carry his forefathers' +weaknesses. But he had a cold eye and a warm mouth, and that +sort of man is generally a social success and a matrimonial +failure. + +It wasn't until toward night that I remembered I'd been talking +to a real prince and I hadn't once said "your Highness" or "your +Excellency" or whatever I should have said. I had said "You!" + +I had hardly closed the door after them when it opened again and +Mr. Pierce came in. He shut the door and, going over to one of +the tables, put a package down on it. + +"Here's the stuff you wanted for the spring, Minnie," he +announced. "I suppose I can't do anything more than register a +protest against it?" + +"You needn't bother doing that," I answered, "unless it makes you +feel better. Your authority ends at that door. Inside the +spring-house I'm in control." + +(It's hard to believe, with things as they are, that I once +really believed that. But I did. It was three full days later +that I learned that I'd been mistaken!) + +Well, he sat there and looked at nothing while I heated water in +my brass kettle over the fire and dissolved the things +against Thoburn's quick eye the next day, and he didn't say +anything. He had a gift for keeping quiet, Mr. Pierce had. It +got on my nerves after a while. + +"Things are doing better," I remarked, stirring up my mixture. + +"Yes," he said, without moving. + +"I suppose they're happier now they have a doctor?" + +"Yes--no--I don't know. He's not much of a doctor, you know--and +there don't seem to be any medical books around." + +"There's one on the care and feeding of infants in the +circulating library," I said, "and he can have my Anatomy." + +"You're generous!" he remarked, with one of his quick smiles. + +"It's a book," I snapped, and fell to stirring again. But he was +moping once more, with his feet out and his hands behind his +head, staring at the ceiling. + +"I say, Minnie--" + +"Yes?" + +"Miss--Miss Jennings and the von Inwald were here just now, +weren't they? I passed them on the bridge." + +"Yes." + +"What--how do you like him?" + +"Better than I expected and not so well as I might," I said. "If +you are going to the house soon you might take Miss Patty her +handkerchief. It's there under that table." + +I took my mixture into the pantry and left it to cool. But as I +started back I stopped. He had got the handkerchief and was +standing in front of the fire, holding it in the palm of his hand +and looking at it. And all in a minute he crushed it to his face +with both hands and against the firelight I could see him +quivering. + +I stepped back into the pantry and came out again noisily. He +was standing very calm and quiet where he had been before, and no +handkerchief in sight. + +"Well," I said, "did you get it?" + +"Get what?" + +"Miss Patty's handkerchief?" + +"Oh--that! Yes. Here it is." He pulled it out of his pocket +and held it up by the corner. + +"Ridiculous size, isn't it, and--" he held it up to his nose--"I +dare say one could almost tell it was hers by the scent. It's-- +it's like her." + +"Humph!" I said, suddenly suspicious, and looked at it. "Well," +I said, "it may remind you of Miss Patty, and the scent may be +like Miss Patty, but she doesn't use perfume on her handkerchief. + +This has an E. C. on it, which means Eliza Cobb." + +He left soon after, rather crestfallen, but to save my life I +couldn't forget what I'd seen--him with that scrap of linen that +he thought was hers crushed to his face, and his shoulders +heaving. I had an idea that he hadn't cared much for women +before, and that, this being a first attack, he hadn't +established what the old doctor used to call an immunity. + + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +PIERCE DISAPPROVES + +Mrs. Hutchins came out to the spring-house the next morning. She +was dressed in a black silk with real lace collar and cuffs, and +she was so puffed up with pride that she forgot to be nasty to +me. + +"I thought I'd better come to you, Minnie," she said. "There +seems to be nobody in authority here any more. Mr. Carter has +put the--has put Mr. von Inwald in the north wing. I can not +imagine why he should have given him the coldest and most +disagreeable part of the house." + +I said I'd speak to Mr. Carter and try to have him moved, and she +rustled over to where I was brushing the hearth and stooped down. + +"Mr. von Inwald is incognito, of course," she said, "but he +belongs to a very old family in his own country--a +noble family. He ought to have the best there is in the house." + +I promised that, too, and she went away, but I made up my mind to +talk to Mr. Pierce. The sanatorium business isn't one where you +can put your own likes and dislikes against the comfort of the +guests. + +Miss Cobb came out a few minutes after; she had on her new green +silk with the white lace trimming. She saw me staring as she +threw off her cape and put her curler on the log. + +"It's a little dressy for so early, of course, Minnie," she said, +"but I wish you'd see some of the other women! Breakfast looked +like an afternoon reception. What would you think of pinning +this black velvet ribbon around my head?" + +"It might have done twenty years ago, Miss Cobb," I answered, +"but I wouldn't advise it now." I was working at the slot- +machine, and I heard her sniff behind me as she hung up her +mirror on the window-frame. + +She tried the curler on the curtain, which she knows I object to, +but she was too full of her subject to be sulky for long. + +"I wish you could see Blanche Moody!" she began again, standing +holding the curler, with a thin wreath of smoke making a halo +over her head. "Drawn in--my dear, I don't see how she can +breathe! I guess there's no doubt about Mr. von Inwald." + +"I'd like to know who put this beer check in the slot-machine +yesterday," I said as indifferently as I could. "What about Mr. +von Inwald?" + +She tiptoed over to me, the halo trailing after her. + +"About his being a messenger from the prince to Miss Jennings!" +she answered in a whisper. "He spent last night closeted with +papa, and the chambermaid on that floor told Lily Biggs that +there was almost a quarrel." + +"That doesn't mean anything," I objected. "If the Angel Gabriel +was shut in with Mr. Jennings for ten minutes he'd be blowing his +trumpet for help." + +Miss Cobb shrugged her shoulders and took hold of a fresh wisp of +hair with the curler. + +"I dare say," she assented, "but the Angel Gabriel wouldn't have +waited to breakfast with Miss Jennings, and have kissed her hand +before everybody at the foot of the stairs!" + +"Is he handsome?" I asked, curious to know how he would impress +other women. But Miss Cobb had never seen a man she would call +ugly. + +"Handsome!" she said. "My dear, he's beautiful! He has a duel +scar on his left cheek--all the nobility have them over there. +I've a cousin living in Berlin--she's the wittiest person--and +she says the German child of the future will be born with a +scarred left cheek!" + +Well, I was sick enough of hearing of Mr. von Inwald before the +day was over. All morning in the spring-house they talked Mr. +von Inwald. They pretended to play cards, but they were really +playing European royalty. Every time somebody laid down a queen, +he'd say, "Is the queen still living, or didn't she die a few +years ago?" And when they played the knave, they'd start off +about the prince again. They'd all decided that Mr. von Inwald +was noble--somebody said that the "von" was a sort of title. The +women were planning to make the evenings more cheerful, too. +They couldn't have a dance with the men using canes or forbidden +to exercise, but Miss Cobb had a lot of what she called "parlor +games" that she wanted to try out. "Introducing the Jones +family" was one of them. + +In the afternoon Mr. von Inwald came out to the spring-house and +sat around, very affable and friendly, drinking the water. He +and the bishop grew quite chummy. Miss Patty was not there, but +about four o'clock Mr. Pierce came out. He did not sit down, but +wandered around the room, not talking to anybody, but staring, +whenever he could, at the prince. Once I caught Mr. von Inwald's +eyes fixed on him, as if he might have seen him before. After a +while Mr. Pierce sat down in a corner like a sulky child and +filled his pipe, and as nobody noticed him except to complain +about the pipe, which he didn't even hear, he sat there for a +half-hour, bent forward, with his pipe clenched in his teeth, and +never took his eyes off Mr. von Inwald's face. + +Senator Biggs was the one who really caused the trouble. He +spent a good deal of time in the spring-house trying to fool his +stomach by keeping it filled up all the time with water. He had +got past the cranky stage, being too weak for it; his face was +folded up in wrinkles like an accordion and his double chin +was so flabby you could have tucked it away inside his collar. + +"What do you think of American women, Mr. von Inwald?" he asked, +and everybody stopped playing cards and listened for the answer. +As Mr. von Inwald represented the prince, wouldn't he be likely +to voice the prince's opinion of American women? + +It's my belief Mr. von Inwald was going to say something nice. +He smiled as if he meant to, but just then he saw Mr. Pierce in +his corner sneering behind his pipe. They looked at each other +steadily, and nobody could mistake the hate in Mr. Pierce's face +or his sneer. After a minute the prince looked away and shrugged +his shoulders, but he didn't make his pretty speech. + +"American women!" he said, turning his glass of spring water +around on the table before him, "they are very lovely, of +course." He looked around and there were Mrs. Moody and Mrs. +Biggs and Miss Cobb, and he even glanced at me in the spring. +Then he looked again at Mr. Pierce and kept his eyes there. "But +they are spoiled, fearfully spoiled. They rule their parents and +they expect to rule their husbands. In Europe we do things +better; we are not--what is the English?--hag-ridden?" + +There was a sort of murmur among the men, but the women all +nodded as if they thought Europe was entirely right. They'd have +agreed with him if he'd advocated sixteen wives sitting cross- +legged on a mat, like the Turks. Mr. Pierce was still staring at +the prince. + +"What I don't quite understand, Mr. von Inwald," the bishop put +in in his nice way, "is your custom of expecting a girl to bring +her husband a certain definite sum of money and to place it under +the husband's control. Our wealthy American girls control their +own money," He was thinking of Miss Patty, and everybody knew it. + +The prince turned red and glared at the bishop. Then I think he +remembered that they didn't know who he was, and he smiled and +started to turning the glass again. + +"Pardon!" he said. "Is it not better? What do women know of +money? They throw it away on trifles, dress, jewels--American +women are extravagant. It is one result of their--of their +spoiling." + +Mr. Pierce got up and emptied his pipe into the fire. Then he +turned. + +"I'm afraid you have not known the best type of American women," +he said, looking hard at the prince. "Our representative women +are our middle-class women. They do not contract European +alliances, not having sufficient money to attract the attention +of the nobility, or enough to buy titles, as they do pearls, for +the purpose of adornment." + +Mr. von Inwald got up, and his face was red. Mr. Pierce was +white and sneering. + +"Also," he went on, "when they marry they wish to control their +own money, and not see it spent in--ways with which you are +doubtless familiar." + +We were all paralyzed. Nobody moved. Mr. Pierce put his pipe in +his pocket and stalked out, slamming the door. Then Mr. von +Inwald shrugged his shoulders and laughed. + +"I see I shall have to talk to our young friend," he said and +picked up his glass. "I'm afraid I've given a wrong impression. +I like the American women very much; too well," he went on with a +flash of his teeth, looking around the room, and brought the +glass to the spring for me to fill. But as I've said +before, I can tell a good bit about a man from the way he gives +me his glass, and he was in a perfect frenzy of rage. When I +reached it back to him he gripped it until his nails were white. + +My joint ached all the rest of the afternoon. About five o'clock +Mr. Thoburn stopped in long enough to say: "What's this I hear +about Carter making an ass of himself to-day?" + +"I haven't heard it," I answered. "What is it?" + +But he only laughed and turned up his collar to go. + +"Jove, Minnie," he said, "why do women of your spirit always +champion the losing side? Be a good girl; give me a hand now and +then with this thing, and I'll see you don't lose by it." + +"We're not going to lose," I retorted angrily. "Nobody has left +yet. We are still ahead on the books." + +He came over and shook a finger in my face. + +"Nobody has left--and why? Because they're all taking a series +of baths. Wait until they've had their fifteen, or twenty-one, +or whatever the cure is, and then see them run!" + +It was true enough; I knew it. + + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE PRINCE, WITH APOLOGIES + +Tillie brought the supper basket for the shelter-house about six +o'clock and sat down for a minute by the fire. She said Mr. +Pierce (Carter to her) had started out with a gun about five +o'clock. It was foolish, but it made me uneasy. + +"They've gone plumb crazy over that Mr. von Inwald," she +declared. "It makes me tired. How do they know he's anything +but what he says he is? He may be a messenger from the emperor +of Austria, and he may be selling flannel chest protectors. Miss +Cobb's all set up; she's talking about getting up an +entertainment and asking that Miss Summers to recite." + +She got up, leaving the basket on the hearth. + +"And say," she said, "you ought to see that dog now. It's been +soakin' in peroxide all day!" + +She went out with the peroxide, but a moment later she +opened the door and stuck her head in, nodding toward the basket. + +"Say," she said, "the chef's getting fussy about the stuff I'm +using in the diet kitchen. You've got to cut it out soon, +Minnie. If I was you I'd let him starve." + +"What!" I screeched, and grasped the rail of the spring. + +"Let him starve!" she repeated. + +"Wha--what are you talking about?" I demanded when I got my +voice. + +She winked at me from the doorway. + +"Oh, I'm on all right, Minnie!" she assured me, "although heaven +only knows where he puts it all! He's sagged in like a chair +with broken springs." + +I saw then that she thought I was feeding Senator Biggs on the +sly, and I breathed again. But my nerves were nearly gone, and +when just then I heard a shot from the direction of the deer +park, even Tillie noticed how pale I got. + +"I don't know what's come over you, Minnie," she said. "That's +only Mr. Carter shooting rabbits. I saw him go out as I started +down the path." + +I was still nervous when I put on my shawl and picked up the +basket. But there was a puddle on the floor and the soup +had spilled. There was nothing for it but to go back for more +soup, and I got it from the kitchen without the chef seeing me. +When I opened the spring-house door again Mr. Pierce was by the +fire, and in front of him, where I'd left the basket, lay a dead +rabbit. He was sitting there with his chin in his hands looking +at the poor thing, and there was no basket in sight. + +"Well," I asked, "did you change my basket into a dead rabbit?" + +"Basket!" he said, looking up. "What basket?" + +I looked everywhere, but the basket was gone, and after a while I +decided that Mr. Dick had had an attack of thoughtfulness (or +hunger) and had carried it out himself. + +And all the time I looked for the basket Mr. Pierce sat with the +gun across his knees and stared at the rabbit. + +"I'd thank you to take that messy thing out of here," I told him. + +"Poor little chap!" he exclaimed. "He was playing in the snow, +and I killed him--not because I wanted food or sport, Minnie, +but--well, because I had to kill something." + +"I hope you don't have those attacks often," I said. He looked +at the rabbit and sighed. + +"Never in my life!" he answered. "For food or sport, that's +different, but--blood-lust!" He got up and put the gun in the +corner, and I saw he looked white and miserable. + +"I don't like myself to-night, Minnie," he said, trying to smile, +"and nobody likes me. I'm going into the garden to eat worms!" + +I didn't like to scold him when he was feeling bad anyhow, but +business is business. So I asked him how long he thought people +would stay if he acted as he had that day. I said that a +sanatorium was a place where the man who runs it can't afford to +have likes and dislikes; that for my part I'd a good deal rather +he'd get rid of his excitement by shooting off a gun, provided he +pointed it away from the house, than to sit around and let his +mind explode and kill all our prospects. I told him, too, to +remember that he wasn't responsible for the morals or actions of +his guests, only for their health. + +"Health!" he echoed, and kicked a chair. "Health! Why, if I +wanted to keep a good dog in condition, Minnie, I wouldn't bring +him here." + +"No," I retorted, "you'd shut him in an old out oven, and give +him a shoe to chew, and he'd come out in three days frisking and +happy. But you can't do that with people." + +"Why not?" he asked. "Although, of course, the supply of out +ovens and old shoes is limited here." + +"As far as Mr. von Inwald goes," I went on, "that's not your +affair or mine. If Miss Patty's own father can't prevent it, why +should you worry about it?" + +"Precisely," he agreed. "Why should I? But I do, Minnie--that's +the devil of it." + +"There are plenty of nice girls," I suggested, feeling rather +sorry for him. + +"Are there? Oh, I dare say." He stooped and picked up his +rabbit. "Straight through the head; not so bad for twilight. +Poor little chap!" + +He said good night and went out, taking the gun and the rabbit +with him, and I went into the pantry to finish straightening +things for the night. In a few minutes I heard voices in the +other room, one Mr. Pierce's, and one with a strong German +accent. + +"When was that?" Mr. von Inwald's voice. + +"A year ago, in Vienna." + +"Where?" + +"At the Bal Tabarin. You were in a loge. The man I was with +told me who the woman was. It was she, I think, who suggested +that you lean over the rail--" + +"Ah, so!" said Mr. von Inwald as if he just remembered. "Ah, +yes, I recall--I was with--the lady was red-haired, is it not? +And it was she who desired me--" + +"You leaned over the rail and poured a glass of wine on my head. +It was very funny. The lady was charmed." + +"I recall it perfectly. I remember that I did it under protest-- +it was a very fine wine, and expensive." + +"Then you also recall," said Mr. Pierce, very quietly, "that +because you were with a--well, because you were with a woman, I +could not return your compliment. But I demanded the privilege +at some future date when you were alone." + +"It is a pity," replied Mr. von Inwald, "that now, when I am +alone, there is no wine!" + +"No, there is no wine," Mr. Pierce agreed slowly, "but there is-- +" + +I opened the door at that, and both of them started. Mr. von +Inwald was standing with his arms folded, and Mr. Pierce had one +arm raised holding up a glass of spring water. In another second +it would have been in the other man's face. + +I walked over to Mr. Pierce and took the glass out of his hand, +and his expression was funny to see. + +"I've been looking everywhere for that glass," I said. "It's got +to be washed." + +Mr. von Inwald laughed and picked up his soft hat from the table. + +He turned around at the door and looked back at Mr. Pierce, still +laughing. + +"Accept my apologies!" he said. "It was such a fine wine, and so +expensive." + +Then he went out. + + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +STOP, THIEF! + +I was pretty nervous when I took charge of the news stand that +evening. Amanda King had an appointment with the dentist and had +left everything topsyturvey. I was still straightening up when +people began to come down to dinner. + +Miss Cobb walked over to the news stand, and she'd cut the white +yoke out of her purple silk. She looked very dressy, although +somewhat thin. + +"Everybody has dressed for dinner to-night, Minnie," she informed +me. "We didn't want Mr. von Inwald to have a wrong idea of +American society, especially after Mr. Carter's ridiculous +conduct this afternoon, and I wonder if you'll be sweet enough to +start the phonograph in the orchestra gallery as we go in-- +something with dignity, you know--the wedding march, or the +overture from Aida." + +"Aida's cracked," I said shortly, "and as far as I'm +concerned, Mr. von Inwald can walk in to his meals without music, +or starve to death waiting for the band." + +But she got the phonograph, anyhow, and put the elevator boy in +the gallery with it. She picked out some things by Caruso and +Tetrazzini and piled them on a chair, but James had things to +himself up there, and played The Spring Chicken through three +times during dinner, with Miss Cobb glaring at the gallery until +the back of her neck ached, and the dining-room girls waltzing in +with the dishes and polka-ing out. + +Mr. Moody came out when dinner was over in a fearful rage and +made for the news stand. + +"One of your ideas, I suppose," he asserted. "What sort of a +night am I going to have after chewing my food to rag-time, with +my jaws doing a skirt-dance? Why in heaven's name couldn't you +have had something slow, like Handel's Largo, if you've got to +have music?" + +But dinner was over fifteen minutes sooner than usual. James +cake-walked everybody out to My Ann Elizer, and Miss Cobb was +mortified to death. + +Two or three things happened that night. For one, I got a +good look at Miss Julia Summers. She was light-haired and well- +fleshed, with an ugly face but a pleasant smile. She wore a low- +necked dress that made Miss Cobb's with the yoke out look like a +storm collar, and if she had a broken heart she didn't show it. + +"Hello," she cried, looking at my hair, "are you selling tobacco +here or are you the cigar-lighter?" + +"Neither," I answered, looking over her head. "I am employed as +the extinguisher of gay guests." + +"Good," she said, smiling. "I'm something fine at that myself. +Suppose I stay here and help. If I watch that line of knitting +women I'll be crotcheting Arabella's wool in my sleep to-night." + +Well, she was too cheerful to be angry with. So she stayed +around for a while, and it was amazing how much tobacco I sold +that evening. Men who usually bought tobies bought the best +cigars, and when Mr. Jennings came up, scowling, and I handed him +the brand he'd smoked for years, she took one, clipped the end of +it as neat as a finger nail and gave it to him, holding up the +lighter. + +"I'm not going to smoke yet, young woman," he said, glaring at +her. But she only smiled. + +"I'm sorry," she said. "I've been waiting hungrily until some +discriminating smoker would buy one of those and light it. I +love the aroma." + +And he stood there for thirty minutes, standing mostly on one +foot on account of the gouty one, puffing like a locomotive, with +her sniffing at the aroma and telling him how lonely she felt +with no friends around and just recovering from a severe illness. + +At eight o'clock he had Mrs. Hutchins bring him his fur-lined +coat and he and Miss Julia took Arabella, the dog, for a walk on +the veranda! + +The rest of the evening was quiet, and I needed it. Miss Patty +and Mr. von Inwald talked by the fire and I think he told her +something--not all--of the scene in the spring-house. For she +passed Mr. Pierce at the foot of the stairs on her way up for the +night and she pretended not to see him. He stood there looking +up after her with his mouth set, and at the turn she glanced down +and caught his eye. I thought she flushed, but I wasn't sure, +and at that minute Senator Biggs bought three twenty-five-cent +cigars and told me to keep the change from a dollar. I was so +surprised at the alteration in him that I forgot Miss Patty +entirely. + +About twelve o'clock, just after I went to my room, somebody +knocked at the door. When I opened, the new doctor was standing +in the hall. + +"I'm sorry to disturb you," he said, "but nobody seems to know +where the pharmacy clerk is and I'll have to get some medicine." + +"If I'd had my way, we'd have had a bell on that pharmacy clerk +long ago," I snapped, getting my keys. "Who's sick?" + +"The big man," he replied. "Biggs is his name, I think, a +senator or something." + +I was leading the way to the stairs, but I stopped. "I might +have known it," I said. "He hasn't been natural all evening. +What's the matter with him? Too much fast?" + +"Fast!" He laughed. "Too much feast! He's got as pretty a case +of indigestion as I've seen for some time. He's giving a +demonstration that's almost theatrical." + +Well, he insisted it was indigestion, although I argued that it +wasn't possible, and he wanted ipecac. + +"I haven't seen a pharmacopoeia for so long that I wouldn't know +one if I met it," he declared, "but I've got a system of +mnemonics that never fails. Ipecac and colic both end with +`c'--I'll never forget that conjunction. It was pounded in and +poured in in my early youth." + +Well, the pharmacy was locked, and we couldn't find a key to fit +it. And when I suggested mustard and warm water he jumped at the +idea. + +"Fine!" he said. "Better let me dish out the spring-water and +you take my job! Lead on, MacDuff, to the kitchen." + +Although it was only midnight there was not a soul about. A hall +leads back of the office to the kitchen and pantries, and there +was a low light there, but the rest was dark. We bumped through +the diet kitchen and into the scullery, when we found we had no +matches. I went back for some, and when I got as far as the diet +kitchen again Doctor Barnes was there, just inside the door. + +"Sh!" he whispered. "Come into the scullery. The kitchen is +dark, but there is somebody in there, fumbling around, striking +matches. I suppose you don't have such things as burglars in +this neck of the woods?" + +Well, somebody had broken into Timmons' candy store a week before +and stolen a box of chewing-gum and a hundred post-cards, +and I told him so in a whisper. + +"Anyhow, it isn't the chef," I said. "He's had a row with the +bath man and is in bed with a cut hand and a black eye, and +nobody else has any business here." + +We tiptoed into the scullery in the dark: just then somebody +knocked a kettle down in the kitchen and it hit the stove below +with a crash. Whoever was there swore, and it was not Francois, +who expresses his feelings mostly in French. This was English. + +There's a little window from the kitchen into the scullery as +well as a door. The window had a wooden slide and it was open an +inch or so. We couldn't see anything, but we could hear a man +moving around. Once he struck a match, but it went out and he +said "Damn!" again, and began to feel his way toward the +scullery. + +Doctor Barnes happened to touch my hand and he patted it as if to +tell me not to be frightened. Then he crept toward the scullery +door and waited there. + +It swung open slowly, but he waited until it closed again +and the man was in the room. Then he yelled and jumped and there +was the sound of a fall. I could hardly strike the match--I was +trembling so--but when I did there was Mr. Dick lying flat on the +floor and the doctor sitting on him. + +"Mister Dick!" I gasped, and dropped the match. + +"Something hit me!" Mr. Dick said feebly, and when I had got a +candle lighted and had explained to Doctor Barnes that it was a +mistake, he got off him and let him up. He was as bewildered as +Mr. Dick and pretty nearly as mad. + +We put him--Mr. Dick--in a chair and gave him a glass of water, +and after he had got his breath--the doctor being a heavy man--he +said he was trying to find something to eat. + +"Confound it, Minnie," he exclaimed, "we're starving! It seems +to me there are enough of you here at least to see that we are +fed. Not a bite since lunch!" + +"But I thought you had the basket," I explained. "I left it at +the spring-house, and when I went back it was gone." + +"So that was it!" he answered. And then he explained that just +about the time they expected their supper they saw a man +carry a basket stealthily through the snow to the deer park. It +was twilight, but they watched him from the window, and he put +the basket through the barbed-wire fence and then crawled after +it. Just inside he sat down on a log and, opening the basket, +began to eat. He was still there when it got too dark to see +him. + +"If that was our dinner," he finished savagely, "I hope he choked +to death over it." + +Doctor Barnes chuckled. "He didn't," he said, "but he's got the +worst case of indigestion in seven counties." + +Well, I got the mustard and water ready with Mr. Dick standing by +hoping Mr. Biggs would die before he got it, and then I filled a +basket for the shelter-house. I put out the light and he took +the basket and started out, but he came back in a hurry. + +"There's somebody outside talking," he said. I went to the door +with him and listened. + +"The sooner the better," Mike was saying. "I'm no good while +I've got it on my mind." + +And Mr. Thoburn: "To-morrow is too soon: they're not in the mood +yet. Perhaps the day after. I'll let you know." + +I didn't get to sleep until almost morning, and then it was to +dream that Mr. Pierce was shouting "Hypocrites" to all the people +in the sanatorium and threatening to throw glasses of mustard and +warm water at them. + + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +A BUNCH OF LETTERS + +When people went down to breakfast the next morning they found a +card hanging on the office door with a half dozen new rules on +it, and when I went out to the spring-house the guests were +having an indignation meeting in the sun parlor, with the bishop +in the chair, and Senator Biggs, so wobbly he could hardly stand, +making a speech. + +I tried to see Mr. Pierce, but early as it was he had gone for a +walk, taking Arabella with him. So I called a conference at the +shelter-house--Miss Patty, Mr. and Mrs. Van Alstyne, Mr. and Mrs. +Dick, and myself. Mrs. Dick wasn't dressed, but she sat up on +the edge of her cot in her dressing-gown, with her feet on the +soap box, and yawned. As we didn't have enough chairs, Miss +Patty jerked the soap box away and made me sit down. Mr. Dick +was getting breakfast. + +We were in a tight place and we knew it. + +"He is making it as hard for us as he can," Mrs. Sam declared. +"The idea of having the card-room lights put out at midnight, and +the breakfast room closed at ten! Nobody gets up at that hour." + +"He was to come here every evening for orders," said Mr. Dick, +measuring ground coffee with a tablespoon, as I had showed him. +"He came just once, and as for orders--well, he gave 'em to me!" + +But Miss Patty was always fair. + +"I loathe him," she asserted. "I want to quarrel with him the +minute I see him. He--he is presumptuous to the point of +impertinence--but he's honest: he thinks we're all hypocrites-- +those that are well and those that are sick or think they are-- +and he hates hypocrisy." + +Everybody talked at once, then, and she listened. + +"Very well," she said. "I'll amend it. We're not all +hypocrites. My motives in all this are perfectly clear--and +selfish." + +"You and old Pierce would make a fine team, Pat," Mrs. Dick +remarked with a yawn. "I like hypocrites myself. They're so +comfy. But if you're not above advice, Pat, you'll have Aunt +Honoria break her neck or something--anything to get father +back to town. Something is going to explode, and Oskar doesn't +like to be agitated." + +She curled up on the cot with that and went sound asleep. The +rest of us had coffee and talked, but there wasn't anything to +do. As Mr. Sam said, Mr. Pierce didn't want to stay, anyhow, and +as likely as not if we went to him in a body and told him he must +come to the shelter-house for instructions, and be suave and +gentle when he was called down by the guests about the steam- +pipes making a racket, he'd probably prefer to go down to the +village and take Doctor Barnes' place washing dishes at the +station. That wouldn't call for any particular mildness. + +But he settled it by appearing himself. He came across the snow +from the direction of Mount Hope, and he had a pair of skees over +his shoulder. (At that time I didn't even know the name of the +things, but I learned enough about them later.) I must say he +looked very well beside Mr. Dick, who wasn't very large, anyhow, +and who hadn't had time to put on his collar, and Mr. Sam, who's +always thin and sallow and never takes a step he doesn't have to. + +I let him in, and when he saw us all there he started and +hesitated. + +"Come in, Pierce," Mr. Sam said. "We've just been talking about +you." + +He came in, but he didn't look very comfortable. + +"What have you decided to do with me?" he asked. "Put me under +restraint?" + +He was unbuttoning his sweater, and now he took out two of the +smallest rabbits I ever saw and held them up by the ears. Miss +Patty gave a little cry and took them, cuddling them in her lap. + +"They're starving and almost frozen, poor little devils," he +said. "I found them near where I shot the mother last night, +Minnie, and by way of atonement I'm going to adopt them." + +Well, although the minute before they'd all been wishing they'd +never seen him, they pretty nearly ate him up. Miss Patty held +the rabbits, so we all had turns at feeding them warm milk with a +teaspoon and patting their pink noses. When it came Mr. Pierce's +turn they were about full up, so he curled his big body on the +floor at Miss Patty's feet and talked to the rabbits and looked +at her. He had one of those faces that's got every emotion +marked on it as clear as a barometer--when he was mad his face +was mad all over, and when he was pleased he glowed to the +tips of his ears. And he was pleased that morning. + +But, of course, he had to be set right about the sanatorium, and +Mr. Sam began it. Mr. Pierce listened, sitting on the floor and +looking puzzled and more and more unhappy. Finally he got up and +drew a long breath. + +"Exactly," he agreed. "I know you are all right and I'm wrong-- +according to your way of thinking. But if these people want to +be well, why should I encourage them to do the wrong thing? They +eat too much, they don't exercise"--he turned to Mr. Van Alstyne. + +"Why, do you know, I asked a half dozen of the men--one after the +other--to go skeeing with me this morning and not one of them +accepted!" + +"Really!" Mr. Sam exclaimed mockingly. + +"What can you do with people like that?" Mr. Pierce went on. +"They don't want to be well; they're all hypocrites. Look at +that man Biggs! I'll lay you ten to one that after fasting five +days and then stealing a whole chicken, a dozen oysters and Lord +knows what else, now that he's sick, he'll hold it against me." + +"He's not holding anything," I objected. + +"Because HE is a hypocrite--" Mr. Sam began. + +"That's not the point, Pierce," Mr. Dick broke in importantly. +"You were to come here for orders and you haven't done it. +You're running this place for me, not for yourself." + +Mr. Pierce looked at Mr. Dick and from there to Mr. Sam and +smiled. + +"I did come," he explained. "I came twice, and each time we +played roulette. I lost all the money I'd had in advance. +Honestly," he confessed, "I felt I couldn't afford to come every +day." + +Miss Patty got up and put the baby rabbits into her sister's big +fur muff. + +"We are all talking around the question," she said. "Mr. Pierce +undertook to manage the sanatorium, and to try to manage it +successfully. He can not do that without making some attempt at +conciliating the people. It's--it's absurd to antagonize them." + +"Exactly," he said coldly. "I was to manage it, and to try to do +it successfully. I'm sorry my methods don't meet with the +approval of this--er--executive committee. But it might as +well be clear that I intend to use my own methods--or none." + +Well, what could we do? Miss Patty went out with her head up, +and the rest of us stayed and ate humble pie, and after a while +he agreed to stay if he wasn't interfered with. He said he and +Doctor Barnes had a plan that he thought was a winner--that it +would either make or break the place, and he thought it would +make it. And by that time we were so meek that we didn't even +ask what it was. + +Doctor Barnes and Miss Summers were the first to come to the +mineral spring that morning. She stopped just inside the door +and sniffed. + +"Something's dead under the floor," she said. + +"If there's anything dead," Doctor Barnes replied, "it's in the +center of the earth. That's the sulphur water." + +She came in at that, but unwillingly, and sat down with her +handkerchief to her nose. Then she saw me + +"Good gracious!" she exclaimed. "What have you done that they +put you here?" + +"If you mean the bouquet from the spring, you get to like it +after a while," I said grimly. "Ordinary air hasn't got any snap +for me now." + +"Humph!" She looked at me suspiciously, but I was busy wiping +off the tables. "Well," she said, holding up the glass Doctor +Barnes had brought her, "it doesn't cost me anything, so here +goes. But think of paying money for it!" + +She drank it down in a gulp and settled herself in her chair. + +"What'll it do to me?" she asked. "Mixed drinks always play the +deuce with me, Barnes, and you know it." + +"If you'll cut down your diet and take some exercise it will make +you thin," I began. "`The process is painless and certain: +kindly nature in her benevolent plan--'" + +"Give me another!" she interrupted, and Doctor Barnes filled her +glass again. "Some women spell fate f-a-t-e," she said, looking +at the water, "but I spell it without the e." + +She took half of it and then put down the glass. "Honestly," she +declared, "I'd rather be fat." + +Mr. Pierce met them there a few minutes later and they had a +three-cornered chat. But Miss Summers evidently didn't know +just how much I knew and was careful of what she said. Once, +however, when I was in the pantry she thought I was beyond ear- +shot. + +"Good heavens, Pierce," she said, "if they could put THAT in a +play!" + +"Cut it out, Julia," Doctor Barnes snapped, and it wasn't until +they had gone that I knew she'd meant me. I looked through the +crack of the door and she was leaning over taking a puff at +Doctor Barnes' cigarette. + +"Curious old world, isn't it?" she said between puffs. "Here we +are the three of us--snug and nice, having seven kinds of hell- +fire water and not having to pay for it; three meals a day and +afternoon tea ditto, good beds and steam-heat ditto--and four +days ago where were we? Pierce, you were hocking your clothes! +Doc, you--" + +"Washing dishes!" he said. "I never knew before how extravagant +it is to have a saucer under a cup!" + +"And I!" she went on, "I, Julia Summers, was staring at a ceiling +in the Finleyville hotel, with a face that looked like a toy +balloon." + +"And now," said Doctor Barnes, "you are more beautiful than ever. + +I am a successful physician--oh, lord, Julia, if you'd hear me +faking lines in my part! And my young friend here--Pierce-- +Julia, Pierce has now become a young reprobate named Dicky +Carter, and may the Lord have mercy on his soul!" + +I tried to get out in time, but I was too late. I saw her rise, +saw the glass of water at her elbow roll over and smash on the +floor, and saw her clutch wildly at Mr. Pierce's shoulder. + +"Not--not DICKY Carter!" she cried. + +"Richard--they call him Dick," Mr. Pierce said uneasily, and +loosened her fingers from his coat. + +Oh, well, everybody knows it now--how she called Mr. Dick +everything in the calendar, and then began to cry and said nobody +would ever know what she'd been through with, and the very dress +she had on was a part of the trousseau she'd had made, and what +with the dressmaker's bills-- Suddenly she stopped crying. + +"Where is he, anyhow?" she demanded. + +"All we are sure of," Mr. Pierce replied quietly, "is that he is +not in the sanatorium." + +She looked at us all closely, but she got nothing from my face. + +"Oh, very well," she said, shrugging her shoulders, "I'll wait +until he shows up. It doesn't cost anything." + +Then, with one of her easy changes, she laughed and picked up her +muff to go. + +"Minnie and I," she said, "will tend bar here, and in our leisure +moments we will pour sulphur water on a bunch of Dicky's letters +that I have, to cool 'em." She walked to the door and turned +around, smiling. + +"Carry fire insurance on 'em all the time," she finished and went +out, leaving us staring at one another! + + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +MISS COBB'S BURGLAR + +I went to bed early that night. What with worrying and being +alternately chilled by tramping through the snow and roasted as +if I was sitting on a volcano with an eruption due, I was about +all in. We'd been obliged to tell Mrs. Sam about the Summers +woman, and I had to put hot flannels on her from nine to ten. +She was quieter when I left her, but, as I told Mr. Sam, it was +the stillness of despair, not resignation. + +I guess it was about four o'clock in the morning when a hand slid +over my face, and I sat up and yelled. The hand covered my mouth +at that, and something long and white and very thin beside the +bed said: "Sh! For heaven's sake, Minnie!" + +It was Miss Cobb! It was lucky I came to my senses when I did, +for her knees gave way under her just then and she doubled +up on the floor beside the bed with her face in my comfort. + +I lighted a candle and set it on a chair beside the bed and took +a good look at her. She was shaking all over, which wasn't +strange, for I sleep with my window open, and she had a key in +her hand. + +"Here," she gasped, holding out the key, "here, Minnie, wake the +house and get him, but, oh, Minnie, for heaven's sake, save my +reputation!" + +"Get who?" I demanded, for I saw it was her room key. + +"I have been coming here for ten years," she groaned, out of the +comfort, "and now, to be bandied about by the cold breath of +scandal!" + +I shook her by the shoulder + +"The cold breath you are raving about is four degrees below zero. + +If you can't tell me what's the matter I'm going back to bed and +cover my feet." + +She got up at that and stood swaying, with her nightgown flapping +around her like a tent. + +"I have locked a man in my room !" she declared in a terrible +voice, and collapsed into the middle of the bed. + +Well, I leaned over and tried to tell her she'd made a +mistake. The more I looked at her, with her hair standing +straight out over her head, and her cambric nightgown with a high +collar and long sleeves, and the hump on her nose where her +brother Willie had hit her in childhood with a baseball bat, the +surer I was that somebody had made a mistake--likely the man. + +Now there's two ways to handle a situation like that: one of them +is to rouse the house--and many a good sanatorium has been hurt +by a scandal and killed by a divorce; the other way is to take +one strong man who can hold his tongue, find the guilty person, +and send him a fake telegram the next morning that his mother is +sick. I've done that more than once. + +I sat down on the side of the bed and put on my slippers. + +"What did he look like?" I asked. "Could you see him?" + +She uncovered one eye. + +"Not--not distinctly," she said. "I--think he was large, and-- +and rather handsome. That beast of a dog must have got in my +room and was asleep under the bed, for it wakened me by +snarling." + +There was nothing in that to make me nervous, but it did. As I +put on my kimono I was thinking pretty hard. + +I could not waken Mr. Pierce by knocking, so I went in and shook +him. He was sound asleep, with his arms over his head, and when +I caught his shoulder he just took my hand and, turning over, +tucked it under his cheek and went asleep again. + +"Mr. Pierce! Mr. Pierce !" He wakened a little at that, but not +enough to open his eyes. He seemed to know that the hand wasn't +his, however, for he kissed it. And with that I slapped him and +he wakened. He lay there blinking at my candle and then he +yawned. + +"Musht have been ashleep!" he said, and turned over on his other +side and shut his eyes. + +It was two or three minutes at least before I had him sitting on +the side of the bed, with a blanket spread over his knees, and +was telling him about Miss Cobb. + +"Miss Cobb!" he said. "Oh, heavens, Minnie, tell her to go back +to bed!" He yawned. "If there's anybody there it's a miskake. +I'm sleepy. What time is it?" + +"I'm not going out of this room until you get up!" I declared +grimly. + +"Oh, very well!" he said, and put his feet back into bed. "If +you think I'm going to get up while you're here--" + +After he seemed pretty well wakened I went out. I waited in the +sitting-room and I heard him growling as he put on his clothes. +When he came out, however, he was more cheerful, and he stopped +in the hall to fish a case out of Mr. Sam's dressing-gown pocket +and light a cigarette. + +"Now!" he said, taking my arm. "Forward, the light-ly clad +brigade! But--" he stopped--"Minnie, we are unarmed! Shall I +get the patent folding corkscrew?" + +He had to be quiet when we got to the bedroom floors, however, +and when we stopped outside Miss Cobb's door he was as sober as +any one could wish him. + +"You needn't come in," he whispered. "Ten to one she dreamed it, +but if she didn't you're better outside. And whatever you hear, +don't yell." + +I gave him the key and he fitted it quietly in the lock. +Arabella, just inside, must have heard, for she snarled. +But the snarl turned into a yelp, as if she'd been suddenly +kicked. + +Mr. Pierce, with his hand on the knob, turned and looked at me in +the candle-light. Then he opened the door. + +Arabella gave another yelp and rushed out; she went between my +feet like a shot and almost overthrew me, and when I'd got my +balance again I looked into the room. Mr. Pierce was at the +window, staring out, and the room was empty. + +"The idiot!" Mr. Pierce said. "If it hadn't been for that snow- +bank! Here, give me that candle!" + +He stood there waving it in circles, but there was neither sight +nor sound from below. After a minute Mr. Pierce put the window +down and we stared at the room. All the bureau drawers were out +on the floor, and the lid of poor Miss Cobb's trunk was open and +the tray upset. But her silver-backed brush was still on the +bureau and the ring the insurance agent had given her lay beside +it. + +We brought her back to her room, and she didn't know whether to +be happy that she was vindicated or mad at the state her things +were in. I tucked her up in bed after she'd gone over her +belongings and Mr. Pierce had double-locked the window and +gone out. She drew my head down to her and her eyes were fairly +popping out of her head. + +"I feel as though I'm going crazy, Minnie!" she whispered, "but +the only things that are gone are my letters from Mr. Jones, +and--my black woolen tights!" + + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +NO MARRIAGE IN HEAVEN + +I slept late the next morning, and when I'd had breakfast and +waded to the spring-house it was nearly nine. It was still +snowing, and no papers or mail had got through, although the +wires were still in fair working order. + +As I floundered out I thought I saw somebody slink around the +corner of the spring-house, but when I got there nobody was in +sight. I was on my knees in front of the fireplace, raking out +the fire, when I heard the door close behind me, and when I +turned, there stood Mr. Dick, muffled to the neck, with his hat +almost over his face. + +"What the deuce kept you so late this morning?" he demanded, in a +sulky voice, and limping over to a table he drew a package out of +his pocket and slammed it on the table. + +"I was up half the night, as usual," I said, rising. "You +oughtn't to be here, Mr. Dick!" + +He caught hold of the rail around the spring, and hobbling about, +dropped into a chair with a groan. + +"For two cents," he declared, "I'd chop a hole in the ice pond +and drown myself. There's no marriage in Heaven." + +"That's no argument for the other place," I answered, and +stopped, staring. He was pulling something out of his overcoat +pocket, an inch at a time. + +"For God's sake, Minnie," he exclaimed, "return this--this +garment to--whomever it belongs to!" + +He handed it to me, and it was Miss Cobb's black tights! I stood +and stared. + +"And then," he went on, reaching for the package on the table, +"when you've done that, return to `Binkie' these letters from her +Jonesie." + +He took the newspaper off the bundle then, and I saw it was +wrapped with a lavender ribbon. I sat down and gazed at him, +fascinated. He was the saddest-eyed piece of remorse I'd seen +for a long time. + +"And when you've got your breath back, Minnie," he said feebly, +"and your strength, would you mind taking the floor mop and +hitting me a few cracks? Only not on the right leg, Minnie--not +on the right leg. I landed on it last night; it's twisted +like a pretzel." + +"Don't stand and stare," he continued irritably, when I didn't +make a move, "at least get that--that infernal black garment out +of sight. Cover it with the newspaper. And if you don't believe +that a sweet-faced young girl like my wife has a positive talent +for wickedness and suspicion, go out to the shelter-house this +morning." + +"So it was you!" I gasped, putting the newspaper over the tights. + +"Why in the name of peace did you jump out the window, and what +did you want with--with these things?" + +He twisted around in his chair to stare at me, and then stooped +and clutched frantically at his leg, as if for inspiration. + +"Want with those things!" he snarled. "I suppose you can't +understand that a man might wake up in the middle of the night +with a mad craving for a pair of black woolen tights, and--" + +"You needn't be sarcastic with me," I broke in. "You can save +that for your wife. I suppose you also had a wild longing for +the love-letters of an insurance agent--" + +And then it dawned on me, and I sat down and laughed until I +cried. + +"And you thought you were stealing your own letters!" I cried. +"The ones she carries fire insurance on! Oh, Mr. Dick, Mr. +Dick!" + +"How was I to know it wasn't Ju--Miss Summers' room?" he demanded +angrily. "Didn't I follow the dratted dog? And wouldn't you +have thought the wretched beast would have known me instead of +sitting on its tail under the bed and yelling for mother? I gave +her the dog myself. Oh, I tell you, Minnie, if I ever get away +from this place--" + +"You've got to get away this minute," I broke in, remembering. +"They'll be coming any instant now." + +He got up and looked around him helplessly. + +"Where'll I go?" he asked. "I can't go back to the shelter- +house." + +I looked at him and he tried to grin. + +"Fact," he said, "hard to believe, but--fact, Minnie. She's got +the door locked. Didn't I tell you she is of a suspicious +nature? She was asleep when I left, and mostly she sleeps all +night. And just because she wakes when I'm out, and lets me come +in thinking she's asleep, when she has one eye open all the +time, and she sees what I'd never even seen myself--that the +string of that damned garment, whatever it is, is fastened to the +hook of my shoe, me thinking all the time that the weight was +because I'd broken my leg jumping--doesn't she suddenly sit up +and ask me where I've been? And I--I'm unsuspicious, Minnie, by +nature, and I said I'd been asleep. Then she jumped up and +showed me that--that thing--those things, hanging to my shoe, and +she hasn't spoken to me since. I wish I was dead." + +And just then a dog barked outside and somebody on the step +stamped the snow off his feet. We were both paralyzed for a +moment. + +"Julia!" Mr. Dick cried, and went white. + +I made a leap for the door, just as the handle turned, and put my +back against it. + +"Just a minute," I called. "The carpet is caught under it!" + +Mr. Dick had lost his head and was making for the spring, as if +he thought hiding his feet would conceal him. I made frantic +gestures to him to go into my pantry, and he went at last, +leaving his hat on the table, I left the door and flung it after +him--the hat, of course, not the door--and when Miss Summers +sauntered in just after, I was on my knees brushing the hearth, +with my heart going three-four time and skipping every sixth +beat. + +"Hello!" she said. "Lovely weather--for polar bears. If the +natives wade through this all winter it's no wonder they walk as +if they are ham-strung. Don't bother getting me a glass. I'll +get my own." + +She was making for the pantry when I caught her, and I guess I +looked pretty wild. + +"I'll get it," I said. "I--that's one of the rules." + +She put her hands in the pockets of her white sweater and smiled +at me. + +"Do you know," she declared, "the old ladies' knitting society +isn't so far wrong about you! About your making rules-- +whatever you want, WHENEVER you want 'em." + +She put her head on one side. + +"Now," she went on, "suppose I break that rule and get my own +glass? What happens to me? I don't think I'll be put out!" + +I threw up my hands in despair, for I was about at the end of my +string. + +"Get it then!" I exclaimed, and sat down, waiting for the +volcano to erupt. But she only laughed and sat down on a table, +swinging her feet. + +"When you know me better, Minnie," she said, "you'll know I don't +spoil sport. I happen to know you have somebody in the pantry-- +moreover, I know it's a man. There are tracks on the little +porch, my dear girl, not made by your galoshes. Also, my dearest +girl, there's a gentleman's glove by your chair there!" I put my +foot on it. "And just to show you what a good fellow I am--" + +She got off the table, still smiling, and sauntered to the pantry +door, watching me over her shoulder. + +"Don't be alarmed!" she called through the door, "I'm not coming +in! I shall take my little drink of nature's benevolent remedy +out of the tin ladle, and then--I shall take my departure!" + +My heart was skipping every second beat by that time, and Miss +Julia stood by the pantry door, her head back and her eyes almost +closed, enjoying every minute of it. If Arabella hadn't made a +diversion just then I think I'd have fainted. + +She'd pulled the newspaper and the tights off the table and was +running around the room with them, one leg in her mouth. + +"Stop it, Arabella!" said Miss Julia, and took the tights from +her. "Yours?" she asked, with her eyebrows raised. + +"No--yes," I answered. + +"I'd never have suspected you of them!" she remarked. "Hardly +sheer enough to pull through a finger ring, are they?" She held +them up and gazed at them meditatively. "That's one thing I draw +the line at. On the boards, you know--never have worn 'em and +never will. They're not modest, to my mind,--and, anyhow, I'm +too fat!" + +Mr. Sam and his wife came in at that moment, Mr. Sam carrying a +bottle of wine for the shelter-house, wrapped in a paper, and two +cans of something or other. He was too busy trying to make the +bottle look like something else--which a good many people have +tried and failed at--to notice what Miss Summers was doing, and +she had Miss Cobb's protectors stuffed in her muff and was +standing very dignified in front of the fire by the time they'd +shaken off the snow. + +"Good morning!" she said. + +"Morning!" said Mr. Sam, hanging up his overcoat with one hand, +and trying to put the bottle in one of the pockets with the +other. Mrs. Sam didn't look at her. + +"Good morning, Mrs. Van Alstyne!" Miss Summers almost threw it +at her. "I spoke to you before; I guess you didn't hear me." + +"Oh, yes, I heard you," answered Mrs. Sam, and turned her back on +her. Give me a little light-haired woman for sheer devilishness! + +I'd expected to see Miss Summers fly to pieces with rage, but she +stared at Mrs. Sam's back, and after a minute she laughed. + +"I see!" she remarked slowly. "You're the sister, aren't you?" + +Mr. Sam had given up trying to hide the bottle and now he set it +on the floor with a thump and came over to the fire. + +"It's--you see, the situation is embarrassing," he began. "If we +had had any idea--" + +"I might have been still in the Finleyville hotel!" she finished +for him. "Awful thought, isn't it?" + +"Under the circumstances," went on Mr. Sam, nervously, "don't you +think it would be--er--better form if er--under the +circumstances--" + +"I'm thinking of my circumstances," she put in, good- +naturedly. "If you imagine that six weeks of one-night stands +has left me anything but a rural wardrobe and a box of dog +biscuit for Arabella, you're pretty well mistaken. I haven't +even a decent costume. All we had left after the sheriff got +through was some grass mats, a checked sunbonnet and a pump." + +"Minnie," Mrs. Sam said coldly, "that little beast of a dog is +trying to drink out of the spring!" + +I caught her in time and gave her a good slapping. When I looked +up Miss Summers was glaring down at me over the rail. + +"Just what do you mean by hitting my dog?" she demanded. It was +the first time I'd seen her angry. + +"Just what I appeared to mean," I answered. "If you want to take +it as a love pat, you may." And I stalked to the door and threw +the creature out into the snow. It was the first false step that +day; if I'd known what putting that dog out meant--! "I don't +allow dogs here," I said, and shut the door. + +Miss Summers was furious; she turned and stared at Mrs. Sam, who +was smiling at the fire. + +"Let Arabella in," she said to me in an undertone, "or I'll open +the pantry door!" + +"Open the door!" I retorted. I was half hysterical, but it was +no time to weaken. She looked me straight in the eye for fully +ten seconds; then, to my surprise, she winked at me. But when +she turned on Mr. Sam she was cold rage again and nothing else. + +"I am not going to leave, if that is what you are about to +suggest," she said. "I've been trying to see Dicky Carter the +last ten days, and I'll stay here until I see him." + +"It's a delicate situation--" + +"Delicate!" she snapped. "It's indelicate it's indecent, that's +what it is. Didn't I get my clothes, and weren't we to have been +married by the Reverend Dwight Johnstone, out in Salem, Ohio? +And didn't he go out there and have old Johnstone marry him to +somebody else? The wretch! If I ever see him--" + +A glass dropped in the pantry and smashed, but nobody paid any +attention. + +"Oh, I'm not going until he comes!" she continued. "I'll stay +right here, and I'll have what's coming to me or I'll know the +reason why. Don't forget for a minute that I know why Mr. Pierce +is here, and that I can spoil the little game by calling the +extra ace, if I want to." + +"You're forgetting one thing," Mrs. Sam said, facing her for the +first time, "if you call the game, my brother is worth exactly +what clothes he happens to be wearing at the moment and nothing +else. He hasn't a penny of his own." + +"I don't believe it," she sniffed. "Look at the things he gave +me!" + +"Yes. I've already had the bills," said Mr. Sam. + +She whirled and looked at him, and then she threw back her head +and laughed. + +"You!" she said. "Why, bless my soul! All the expense of a +double life and none of its advantages!" + +She went out on that, still laughing, leaving Mrs. Sam scarlet +with rage, and when she was safely gone I brought Mr. Dick out to +the fire. He was so limp he could hardly walk, and it took three +glasses of the wine and all Mr. Sam could do to start him back to +the shelter-house. His sister would not speak to him. + +Mike went to Mr. Pierce that day and asked for a raise of salary. + +He did not get it. Perhaps, as things have turned out, it +was for the best, but it is strange to think how different things +would have been if he'd been given it. He was sent up later, of +course, for six months for malicious mischief, but by that time +the damage was done. + + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +EVERY DOG HAS HIS DAY + +That was on a Saturday morning. During the golf season Saturday +is always a busy day with us, with the husbands coming up for +over Sunday, and trying to get in all the golf, baths and spring +water they can in forty-eight hours. But in the winter Saturday +is the same as any, other day. + +It had stopped snowing and the sun was shining, although it was +so cold that the snow blew like powder. By eleven o'clock every +one who could walk had come to the spring-house. Even Mr. +Jennings came down in a wheeled chair, and Senator Biggs, still +looking a sort of grass-green and keeping his eyes off me, came +and sat in a corner, with a book called Fast versus Feast held +so that every one could see. + +There were bridge tables going, and five hundred, and a group +around the slot-machine, while the crocheters formed a +crowd by themselves, exchanging gossip and new stitches. + +About twelve o'clock Mr. Thoburn came in, and as he opened the +door, in leaped Arabella. The women made a fuss over the +creature and cuddled her, and when I tried to put her out +everybody objected. So she stayed, and Miss Summers put her +through a lot of tricks, while the men crowded around. As I said +before, Miss Summers was a first favorite with the men. + +Mr. von Inwald and Miss Patty came in just then and stood +watching. + +"And now," said Mr. von Inwald, "I propose, as a reward to Miss +Arabella, a glass of this wonderful water. Minnie, a glass of +water for Arabella!" + +"She doesn't drink out of one of my glasses," I declared angrily. + +"It's one of my rules that dogs--" + +"Tut!" said Mr. Thoburn. "What's good for man is good for beast. + +Besides, the little beggar's thirsty." + +Well, they made a great fuss about the creature's being thirsty, +and so finally I got a panful of spring water and it drank until +I thought it would burst. I'm not vicious, as I say, but I wish +it had. + +Well, the dog finished and lay down by the fire, and everything +seemed to go on as before. Mr. Thoburn was in a good humor, and +he came over to the spring and brought a trayful of glasses. + +"To save you steps, Minnie!" he explained. "You have no idea how +it pains me to see you working. Gentlemen, name your poison!" + +"A frappe with blotting-paper on the side," Mr. Moody snarled +from the slot-machine. "If I drink much more, I'll have to be +hooped up like a barrel." + +"Just what is the record here?" the bishop asked. "I'm ordered +eight glasses, but I find it more than a sufficiency." + +"We had one man here once who could drink twenty-five at a time," +I said, "but he was a German." + +"He was a tank," Mr. Sam corrected grumpily. He was watching +something on the floor--I couldn't see what. "All I need is to +swallow a few goldfish and I'd be a first-class aquarium." + +"What I think we should do," Miss Cobb said, "is to try to find +out just what suits us, and stick to that. I'm always trying." + +"Damned trying!" Mr. Jennings snarled, and limped over for +more water. "I'd like to know where to go for rheumatism." + +"I got mine here," said Mr. Thoburn cheerfully. "It's my opinion +this place is rheumatic as well as malarious. And as for this +water, with all due respect to the spirit in the spring"--he +bowed to me--"I think it's an insult to ask people to drink it. +It isn't half so strong as it was two years ago. Taste it; smell +it! I ask the old friends of the sanatorium, is that water what +it used to be?" + +"Don't tell me it was ever any worse than this!" Miss Summers +exclaimed. But Thoburn went on. The card-players stopped to +listen, but Mr. Sam was still staring at something on the floor. + +"I tell you, the spring is losing its virtue, and, like a woman, +without virtue, it is worthless." + +"But interesting!" Mr. Sam said, and stooped down. + +"Consider," went on Mr. Thoburn, standing and holding his glass +to the light, "how we are at the mercy of this little spring! A +convulsion in the bowels of the earth, and its health-giving +properties may be changed to the direst poison. How do we know, +you and I, some such change has not occurred overnight? +Unlikely as it is, it's a possibility that, sitting here calmly, +we may be sipping our death potion." + +Some of the people actually put down their glasses and everybody +began to look uneasy except Mr. Sam, who was still watching +something I could not see. + +Mr. Thoburn looked around and saw he'd made an impression. "We +may," he continued, "although my personal opinion of this water +is that it's growing too weak to be wicked. I prove my faith in +Mother Nature; if it is poisoned, I am gone. I drink!" + +Mr. Sam suddenly straightened up and glanced at Miss Summers. +"Perhaps I'm mistaken," he said, "but I think there is something +the matter with Arabella." + +Everybody looked: Arabella was lying on her back, jerking and +twitching and foaming at the mouth. + +"She's been poisoned!" Miss Summers screeched, and fell on her +knees beside her. "It's that wretched water!" + +There was pretty nearly a riot in a minute. Everybody +jumped up and stared at the dog, and everybody remembered the +water he or she had just had, and coming on top of Mr. Thoburn's +speech, it made them babbling lunatics. As I look back, I have a +sort of picture of Miss Summers on the floor with Arabella in her +lap, and the rest telling how much of the water they had had and +crowding around Mr. Thoburn. + +"It seems hardly likely it was the water," he said, "although +from what I recall of my chemistry it is distinctly possible. +Springs have been known to change their character, and the +coincidence--the dog and the water--is certainly startling. +Still, as nobody feels ill--" + +But they weren't sure they didn't. The bishop said he felt +perfectly well, but he had a strange inclination to yawn all the +time, and Mrs. Biggs' left arm had gone to sleep. And then, with +the excitement and all, Miss Cobb took a violent pain in the back +of her neck and didn't know whether to cry or to laugh. + +Well, I did what I could. The worst of it was, I wasn't sure it +wasn't the water. I thought possibly Mr. Pierce had made a +mistake in what he had bought at the drug store, and +although I don't as a rule drink it myself, I began to feel queer +in the pit of my stomach. + +Mr. Thoburn came over to the spring, and filling a glass, took it +to the light, with every one watching anxiously. When he brought +it back he stooped over the railing and whispered to me. + +"When did you fix it?" he asked sternly. + +"Last night," I answered. It was no time to beat about the bush. + +"It's yellower than usual," he said. "I'm inclined to think +something has gone wrong at the drug store, Minnie." + +I could hardly breathe. I had the most terrible vision of all +the guests lying around like Arabella, twitching and foaming, and +me going to prison as a wholesale murderess. Any hair but mine +would have turned gray in that minute. + +Mr. von Inwald was watching like the others, and now he came over +and caught Mr. Thoburn by the arm. + +"What do you think--" he asked nervously. "I--I have had three +glasses of it!" + +"Three!" shouted Senator Biggs, coming forward. "I've had +eleven! I tell you, I've been feeling queer for twenty-four +hours! I'm poisoned! That's what I am." + +He staggered out, with Mrs. Biggs just behind him, and from that +moment they were all demoralized. I stood by the spring and +sipped at the water to show I wasn't afraid of it, with my knees +shaking under me and Arabella lying stock-still, as if she had +died, under my very nose. One by one they left to look for +Doctor Barnes, or to get the white of egg, which somebody had +suggested as an antidote. + +Miss Cobb was one of the last to go. She turned in the doorway +and looked back at me, with tears in her eyes. + +"It isn't your fault, Minnie," she said, "and forgive me if I +have ever said anything unkind to you." Then she went, and I was +alone, looking down at Arabella. + +Or rather, I thought I was alone, for there was a movement by one +of the windows and Miss Patty came forward and knelt by the dog. + +"Of all the absurdities!" she said. "Poor little thing! Minnie, +I believe she's breathing!" + +She put the dog's head in her lap, and the little beast opened +its eyes and tried to wag its blue tail. + +"Oh, Miss Patty, Miss Patty!" I exclaimed, and I got down beside +her and cried on her shoulder, with her stroking my hand and +calling me dearest! Me! + +I was wiping my eyes when the door was thrown open and Mr. Pierce +ran in. He had no hat on and his hair was powdered with snow. +He stopped just inside the door and looked at Miss Patty. + +"You--" he said "you are all right? You are not--" he came +forward and stood over her, with his heart in his eyes. She +MUST have known from that minute. + +"My God!" he exclaimed, "I thought you were poisoned!" + +She looked up, without smiling, and then I thought she half shut +her eyes, as if what she saw in his face hurt her. + +"I am all right," she assured him, "and little Arabella will be +all right, too. She's had a convulsion, that's all--probably +from overeating. As for the others--!" + +"Where is the--where is von Inwald?" + +"He has gone to take the white of an egg," she replied rather +haughtily. She was too honest to evade anything, but she +flushed. Of course, I knew what he didn't--that the prince had +been among the first to scurry to the house, and that he hadn't +even waited for her. + +He walked to the window, as if he didn't want her to see what he +thought of that, and I saw him looking hard at something outside +in the snow. When he walked back to the fire he was smiling, and +he stooped over and poked Arabella with his finger. + +"So that was it!" he said. "Full to the scuppers, poor little +wretch! Minnie, I am hoist with my own petard, which in this +case was a boomerang." + +"Which is in English--" I asked. + +"With the instinct of her sex, Arabella has unearthed what was +meant to be buried forever. She had gorged herself into a +convulsion on that rabbit I shot last night!" + + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +THE MUTINY + +They went to the house together, he carrying Arabella like a sick +baby and Miss Patty beside him. As far as I could see they +didn't speak a word to each other, but once or twice I saw her +turn and look up at him as if she was puzzled. + +I closed the door and stood just inside, looking at father's +picture over the mantel. As sure as I stood there, the eyes were +fixed on the spring, and I sensed, as you may say, what they +meant. I went over and looked down into the spring, and it +seemed to me it was darker than usual. It may have smelled +stronger, but the edge had been taken off my nose, so to speak, +by being there so long. + +From the spring I looked again at father, and his eyes were on me +mournful and sad. I felt as though, if he'd been there, father +would have turned the whole affair to the advantage of the +house, and it was almost more than I could bear. I was only +glad the old doctor's enlargement had not come yet. I couldn't +have endured having it see what had occurred. + +The only thing I could think of was to empty the spring and let +the water come in plain. I could put a little sulphur in to give +it color and flavor, and if it turned out that Mr. Pierce was +right and that Arabella was only a glutton, I could put in the +other things later. + +I was carrying out my first pailful when Doctor Barnes came down +the path and took the pail out of my hand. + +"What are you doing?" he asked. "Making a slide?" + +"No," I said bitterly, "I am watering the flowers." + +"Good!" He was not a bit put out. "Let me help you." He took +the pail across the path and poured a little into the snow at the +base of a half-dozen fence posts. "There!" he said, coming back +triumphant. "The roses are done. Now let's have a go at the +pansies and the lady's-slippers and the--the begonias. I say"-- +he stopped suddenly on his way in--"sulphur water on a +begonia--what would it make? Skunk cabbage?" + +Inside, however, he put down the pail, and pulling me in, closed +the door. + +"Now forget it!" he commanded. "Just because a lot of damn fools +see a dog in a fit and have one, too, is that any reason for your +being scared wall-eyed and knock-kneed?" + +"I'm not!" I snapped. + +"Well, you're wall-eyed with fright," he insisted. "Of course, +you're the best judge of your own knees, but after last night-- +Had any lunch?" + +I shook my head. + +"Exactly," he said. "You make me think of the little boy who dug +post-holes in the daytime and took in washings at night to +support the family. Sit down." + +I sat. + +"Inhale and exhale slowly four times, and then swallow the lump +in your throat. . . . Gone?" + +"Yes." + +"Good." He was fumbling in his pocket and he brought out a +napkin. When he opened it there was a sandwich, a piece of +cheese and a banana. + +"What do you think of that?" he asked, watching me anxiously. +"Looks pretty good?" + +"Fine," I said, hating to disappoint him, although I never eat +sardines, and bananas give me indigestion, "I'm hungry enough to +eat a raw Italian." + +"Then fall to," he directed, and with a flourish he drew a bottle +of ginger ale from his pocket. + +"How's this?" he demanded, holding it up. "Cheers but doesn't +inebriate; not a headache in a barrel; ginger ale to the gingery! + +`A quart of ale is a dish for a king,'" he said, holding up a +glass. "That's Shakespeare, Miss Minnie." + +I was a good bit more cheerful when I'd choked down the sandwich, +especially when he assured me the water was all right--"a little +high, as you might say, but not poisonous. Lord, I wish you +could have seen them staggering into my office!" + +"I saw enough," I said with a shiver. + +"That German, von Inwald," he went on, "he's the limit. He +accused us of poisoning him for reasons of state!" + +"Where are they now?" + +"My dear girl," he answered, putting down his glass, "what +has been pounded into me ever since I struck the place? The +baths! I prescribe 'em all day and dream 'em all night. Where +are the poisonees now? They are steaming, stewing, exuding in +the hot rooms of the bath department--all of them, every one of +them! In the hold and the hatches down!" + +He picked up the pail and went down the steps to the spring. + +"After all," he said, "it won't hurt to take out a little of this +and pour it on the ground. It ought to be good fertilizer." He +stooped. "`Come, gentle spring, ethereal mildness, come,'" he +quoted, and dipped in the pail. + +Just then somebody fell against the door and stumbled into the +room. It was Tillie, as white as milk, and breathing in gasps. + +"Quick!" she screeched, "Minnie, quick!" + +"What is it?" I asked, jumping up. She'd fallen back against the +door-frame and stood with her hand clutching her heart. + +"That dev--devil--Mike!" she panted. "He has turned on the steam +in the men's baths and gone--gone away!" + +"With people in the bath?" Doctor Barnes asked, slamming down the +pail. + +Tillie nodded. + +"Then why in creation don't they get out of the baths until we +can shut off the steam?" I demanded, grabbing up my shawl. But +Tillie shook her head in despair. + +"They can't," she answered, "he's hid their clothes!" + +The next thing I recall is running like mad up the walk with +Doctor Barnes beside me, steadying me by the arm. I only spoke +once that I remember and that was just as we got to the house, + +"This settles it!" I panted, desperately. "It's all over." + +"Not a bit of it!" he said, shoving me up the steps and into the +hall. "The old teakettle is just getting `het up' a bit. By the +gods and little fishes, just listen to it singing down there!" + + +The help was gathered in a crowd at the head of the bath-house +staircase, where a cloud of steam was coming up, and down below +we could hear furious talking, and somebody shouting, "Mike! +Mike!" in a voice that was choked with rage and steam. + +Doctor Barnes elbowed his way through the crowd to the top of the +stairs and I followed. + +"There's Minnie!" Amanda King yelled. "She knows all about the +place. Minnie, you can shut it off, can't you?" + +"I'll try," I said, and was starting down, when Doctor Barnes +jerked me back. + +"You stay here," he said. "Where's Mr. Pier--where's Carter?" + +"Down with the engineer," somebody replied out of the steam +cloud. + +"Hello there!" he called down the staircase. "How's the air?" + +"Clothes! Send us some clothes!" + +It was Mr. Sam calling. The rest was swallowed up in a fresh +roaring, as if a steam-pipe had given away. That settled the +people below. With a burst of fury they swarmed up the stairs in +their bath sheets, the bishop leading, and just behind him, +talking as no gentleman should talk under any circumstances, +Senator Biggs. The rest followed, their red faces shining +through the steam--all of them murderous, holding their sheets +around them with one hand, and waving the other in a frenzy. It +was awful. + +The help scattered and ran, but I stood my ground. The sight of +a man in a sheet didn't scare me and it was no time for weakness. + +The steam was thicker than ever, and the hall was misty. A +moment later the engineer came up and after him Mr. Pierce, with +a towel over his mouth and a screw-driver in his hand. He was +white with rage. He brushed past the sheets without paying the +slightest attention to them, and tore the towel off his mouth. + +"Who saw Mike last?" he shouted across to where the pharmacy +clerk, the elevator boy and some of the bell-boys had retreated +to the office and were peeping out through the door. + +Here Mr. Moody, who's small at any time, and who without the +padding on his shoulders and wrapped in a sheet with his red face +above, looked like a lighted cigarette, darted out of the crowd +and caught him by the sleeve. + +"Here!" he cried, "we've got a few things to say to you, you +young--" + +"Take your hand off my arm!" thundered Mr. Pierce. + +The storm broke with that. They crowded around Mr. Pierce, +yelling like maniacs, and he stood there, white-faced, and let +them wear themselves out. The courage of a man in a den of lions +was nothing to it. Doctor Barnes forced his way through the +crowd and stood there beside him. + +It wasn't only the steam and their clothes being hidden; it had +started with the scare at the spring in the morning, and when +they had told him what they thought about that, they went back +still further and bellowed about the mismanagement of the place +ever since he had taken charge, and the food, and the steam-heat, +and the new rules--oh, they hated him all right, and they told +him so, purple-faced with rage and heat, dancing around him and +shaking one fist in his face, as I say, while they held their +sheets fast with the other. + +And I stood there and watched, my mind awhirl, expecting every +minute to hear that they were all leaving, or to have some one +forget and shake both fists at once. + +And that's how it ended finally--I mean, of course, that +they said they would all leave immediately, and that he ought to +be glad to have them go quietly, and not have him jailed for +malicious mischief or compounding a felony. The whole thing was +an outrage, and the three train would leave the house as empty as +a squeezed lemon. + +I wanted to go forward and drop on my knees and implore them to +remember the old doctor, and the baths they'd had when nothing +went wrong, and the days when they'd sworn that the spring kept +them young and well, but there was something in Mr. Pierce's face +that kept me back. + +"At three o'clock, then," he said. "Very well." + +"Don't be a fool!" I heard Mr. Sam from the crowd. + +"Is that all you have to say?" roared Mr. von Inwald. I hadn't +noticed him before. He had his sheet on in Grecian style and it +looked quite ornamental although a little short. "Haven't you +any apology to make, sir?" + +"Neither apology nor explanation to you," Mr. Pierce retorted. +And to the other: "It is an unfortunate accident--incident, if +you prefer." He looked at Thoburn, who was the only one in a +bath robe, and who was the only cheerful one in the lot. "I +had refused a request of the bath man's and he has taken this +form of revenge. If this gives me the responsibility I am +willing to take it. If you expect me to ask you to stay I'll not +do it. I don't mind saying that I am as tired of all this as you +are." + +"As tired of what?" demanded Mr. Moody, pushing forward out of +the crowd. Mr. Sam was making frantic gestures to catch Mr. +Pierce's eye, but he would not look at him. + +"Of all this," he said. "Of charging people sanatorium prices +under a pretense of making them well. Does anybody here imagine +he's going to find health by sitting around in an overstuffed +leather chair, with the temperature at eighty, eating five meals +a day, and walking as far as the mineral spring for exercise?" + +There was a sort of angry snarl in the air, and Mr. Sam threw up +his one free hand in despair. + +"In fact," Mr. Pierce went on, "I'd about decided on a new order +of things for this place anyhow. It's going to be a real health +resort, run for people who want to get well or keep well. +People who wish to be overfed, overheated and coddled need not +come--or stay." + +The bishop spoke over the heads of the others, who looked dazed. + +"Does that mean," he inquired mildly, "that--guests must either +obey this new order of things or go away?" + +Mr. Pierce looked at the bishop and smiled. + +"I'm sorry, sir," he said, "but as every one is leaving, anyhow-- +" + +They fairly jumped at him then. They surrounded him in a howling +mob and demanded how he dared to turn them out, and what did he +mean by saying they were overfed, and they would leave when they +were good and ready and not before, and he could go to blazes. +It was the most scandalous thing I've ever known of at Hope +Springs, and in the midst of it Mr. Pierce stood cool and quiet, +waiting for a chance to speak. And when the time came he jumped +in and told them the truth about themselves, and most of it hurt. + +He was good and mad, and he stood there and picked out the +flabby ones and the fat ones, the whisky livers and the +tobacco hearts and the banquet stomachs, and called them out by +name. + +When he got through they were standing in front of him, ashamed +to look at one another, and not knowing whether to fall on him +and tear him to pieces, or go and weep in a corner because they'd +played such havoc with the bodies the Lord gave them. If he'd +weakened for a minute they'd have jumped on him. But he didn't. +He got through and stood looking at them in their sheets, and +then he said coolly: + +"The bus will be ready at two-thirty, gentlemen," and turning on +his heels, went into the office and closed the door. + +They scattered to their rooms in every stage of rage and +excitement, and at last only Mr. Sam and I were left staring at +each other. "Damned young idiot!" he said. "I wish to heavens +you'd never suggested bringing him here, Minnie!" + +And leaving me speechless with indignation, he trailed himself +and his sheet up the stairs. + + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +HOME TO ROOST + +I couldn't stand any more. It was all over! I rushed to my room +and threw myself on the bed. At two-thirty I heard the bus come +to the porte-cochere under my window and then drive away; that +was the last straw. I put a pillow over my head so nobody could +hear me, and then and there I had hysterics. I knew I was having +them, and I wasn't ashamed. I'd have exploded if I hadn't. + And then somebody jerked the pillow away and I looked up, +with my eyes swollen almost shut, and it was Doctor Barnes. He +had a glass of water in his hand and he held it right above me. + +"One more yell," he said, "and it goes over you!" + +I lay there staring up at him, and then I knew what a fright I +looked, and although I couldn't speak yet, I reached up and felt +for my hairpins. + +"That's better," he said, putting down the glass. "Another ten +minutes of that and you'd have burst a blood vessel. Don't +worry. I know I have no business here, but I anticipated +something of this kind, and it may interest you to know that I've +been outside in the hall since the first whoop. It's been a good +safety-valve." + +I sat up and stared at him. I could hardly see out of my eyes. +He had his back to the light, but I could tell that he had a +cross of adhesive plaster on his cheek and that one eye was +almost shut. He smiled when he saw my expression. + +"It's the temperament," he said. "It goes with the hair. I've +got it too, only I'm apt to go out and pick a fight at such +times, and a woman hasn't got that outlet. As you see, I found +Mike, and my disfigurement is to Mike's as starlight to the +noonday glare. Come and take a walk." + +I shook my head, but he took my arm and pulled me off the bed. + +"You come for a walk!" he said. "I'll wait in the hall until you +powder your nose. You look like a fire that's been put out by a +rain-storm." + + +I didn't want to go, but anything was better than sitting in +the room moping. I put on my jacket and Miss Patty's +chinchillas, which cheered me a little, but as we went down- +stairs the quiet of the place sat on my chest like a weight. + +The lower hall was empty. A new card headed "Rules" hung on the +door into the private office, but I did not read it. What was +the use of rules without people to disobey them? Mrs. Moody had +forgotten her crocheting bag and it hung on the back of a chair. +I had to bite my lip to keep it from trembling again. + +"The Jenningses are still here," said the doctor. "The old man +is madder than any hornet ever dared be, and they go in the +morning. But the situation was too much for our German friend. +He left with the others." + +Well, we went out and I took the path I knew best, which was out +toward the spring-house. There wasn't a soul in sight. The +place looked lonely, with the trees hung with snow, and arching +over the board walk. At the little bridge over the creek Doctor +Barnes stopped, and leaning over the rail, took a good look at +me. + +"When you self-contained women go to pieces," he said, "you +pretty near smash, don't you? You look as if you'd had a death +in your family." + +"This WAS my family," I half sniveled. + +"But," he said, "you'll be getting married and having a home of +your own and forgetting all about this." + +He looked at me with his sharp eyes. "There's probably some nice +chap in the village, eh?" + +I shook my head. I had just caught sight of the broken pieces of +the Moody water-pitcher on the ice below + +"No nice young man!" he remarked. "Not the telegraph operator, +or the fellow who runs the livery-stable--I've forgotten his +name." + +"Look here," I turned on him, "if you're talking all this +nonsense to keep my mind off things, you needn't." + +"I'm not," he said. "I'm asking for the sake of my own mind, but +we'll not bother about that now. We'd better start back." + +It was still snowing, although not so hard. The air had done me +some good, but the lump in my throat seemed to have gone to my +chest. The doctor helped me along, for the snow was drifting, +and when he saw I was past the crying stage he went back to +what we were both thinking about. + +"Old Pierce is right," he said. "Remember, Miss Minnie, I've +nothing against you or your mineral spring; in fact, I'm strong +for you both. But while I'm out of the ring now for good--I +don't mind saying to you what I said to Pierce, that the only +thing that gets into training here, as far as I can see, is a +fellow's pocketbook." + +We went back to the house and I straightened the news stand, +Amanda King having taken a violent toothache as a result of the +excitement. The Jenningses were packing to go, and Miss Summers +had got a bottle of peroxide and shut herself in her room. At +six o'clock Tillie beckoned to me from the door of the officers' +dining-room and said she'd put the basket in the snow by the +grape arbor. I got ready, with a heavy heart, to take it out. I +had forgotten all about their dinner, for one thing, and I had to +carry bad news. + +But Mr. Pierce had been there before me. I saw tracks in the +fresh snow, for, praise heaven! it had snowed all that week and +our prints were filled up almost as fast as we made them. When I +got to the shelter-house it was in a wild state of +excitement. Mrs. Dick, with her cheeks flushed, had gathered all +her things on the cot and was rolling them up in sheets and +newspapers. But Mr. Dick was sitting on the box in front of the +fire with his curly hair standing every way. He had been +roasting potatoes, and as I opened the door, he picked one up and +poked at it to see if it was done. + +"Damn!" he said, and dropped it. + +Mrs. Dick sat on the cot rolling up a pink ribbon and looked at +him. + +"If you want to know exactly my reason for insisting on moving +to-night, I'll tell you," she said, paying no attention to me. +"It is your disposition." + +He didn't say anything, but he put his foot on the potato and +smashed it. + +"If I had to be shut in here with you one more day," she went on, +"I'd hate you." + +"Why the one more day?" he asked, without looking up. + +But she didn't answer him. She was in the worst kind of a +temper; she threw the ribbon down, and coming over, lifted the +lid of my basket and looked in. + +"Ham again!" she exclaimed ungratefully. "Thanks so much for +remembering us, Minnie. I dare say our dinner to-day slipped +your mind!" + +"I wonder if it strikes you, Minnie," Mr. Dick said, noticing me +for the first time, "that if you and Sam hadn't been so +confounded meddling, that fellow Pierce would be washing buggies +in the village livery-stable where he belongs, and I'd be in one +piece of property that's as good as gone this minute." + +"Egg salad and cheese!" said Mrs. Dick. "I'm sick of cheese. If +that's the kind of supper you've been serving--" + +But I was in a bad humor, anyhow, and I'd had enough. I stood +just inside the door and I told them I'd done the best I could, +not for them, but because I'd promised the old doctor, and if I'd +made mistakes I'd answer for them to him if I ever met him in the +next world. And in the meantime I washed my hands of the whole +thing, and they might make out as best they could. I was +going. + +Mrs. Dick heard me through. Then she came over and put her hand +on mine where it lay on the table. + +"You're perfectly right," she said. "I know how you have tried, +and that the fault is all that wretched Pierce's. You mustn't +mind Mr. Carter, Minnie. He's been in that sort of humor all +day." + +He looked at her with the most miserable face I ever saw, but he +didn't say anything. She sighed, the little wretch. + +"We've all made mistakes," she said, "and not the least was my +thinking that I--well, never mind. I dare say we will manage +somehow." + +He got up then, his face twisted with misery. + +"Say it," he said. "You hate me; you shiver if I touch your +hand--oh, I'm not very keen, but I saw that." + +"The remedy for that is very, simple," she replied coolly. "You +needn't touch my hand." + +"Stop!" I snapped. "Just stop before you say something you'll be +sorry for. Of course, you hate each other. It beats me, anyhow, +why two people who get married always want to get away by +themselves until they're so sick of each other that they don't +get over it the rest of their lives. The only sensible honeymoon +I ever heard of was when one of the chambermaids here married a +farmer in the neighborhood. It was harvest and he couldn't +leave, so she went ALONE to see her folks and she said it beat +having him along all hollow." + +She was setting out the supper, putting things down with a bang. +He didn't move, although he must have been starving. + +"Another thing I'd advise," I said. "Eat first and talk after. +You'll see things different after you've got something in your +stomach." + +"I wish you wouldn't meddle, Minnie!" she snapped, and having put +down her own plate and knife and fork, not laying a place for +him, she went over and tried to get one of the potatoes from the +fire. + +Well, she burnt her finger, or pretended to, and I guess her +solution was as good as mine, for she began to cry, and when I +left he was tying it up with a bit of his handkerchief; if she +shivered when he kissed it I didn't notice it. They were to come +up to the house after her father left in the morning, and I was +to dismiss all the old help and get new ones so he could take +charge and let Mr. Pierce go. + +I plodded back with my empty basket. I had only one clear +thought,--that I wouldn't have any more tramping across the golf +links in the snow. I was too tired really to care that with the +regular winter boarders gone and eight weeks still until Lent, +we'd hardly be able to keep going another fortnight. I wanted to +get back to my room and go to bed and forget. + +But as I came near the house I saw Mr. Pierce come out on the +front piazza and switch on the lights. He stood there looking +out into the snow, and the next minute I saw why. Coming up the +hill and across the lawn was a shadowy line of people, black +against the white. They were not speaking, and they moved +without noise over the snow. I thought for a minute that my +brain had gone wrong; then the first figure came into the light, +and it was the bishop. He stood at the front of the steps and +looked up at Mr. Pierce. + +"I dare say," he said, trying to look easy, "that this is sooner +than you expected us!" + +Mr. Pierce looked down at the crowd. Then he smiled, a growing +smile that ended in a grin. + +"On the contrary," he said, "I've been expecting you for an hour +or more." + +The procession began to move gloomily up the steps. All of them +carried hand luggage, and they looked tired and sheepish Miss +Cobb stopped in front of Mr. Pierce. + +"Do you mean to say," she demanded furiously, "that you knew the +railroad was blocked with snow, and yet you let us go!" + +"On the contrary, Miss Cobb," he said politely, "I remember +distinctly regretting that you insisted on going. Besides, there +was the Sherman House." + +Senator Briggs{sic} stopped in front of him. "Probably you also +knew that THAT was full, including the stables, with people +from the stalled trains," he asserted furiously. + +Two by two they went in and through the hall, stamping the snow +off, and up to their old rooms again, leaving Slocum, the clerk, +staring at them as if he couldn't believe his eyes. + +Mr. Pierce and I watched from the piazza, through the glass. + +We saw Doctor Barnes stop and look, and then go and hang over the +news stand and laugh himself almost purple, and we saw Mr. +Thoburn bringing up the tail of the procession and trying to look +unconcerned. I am not a revengeful woman, but that was one +of the happiest moments of my life. + +Doctor Barnes turned suddenly, and catching me by the arm, +whirled me around and around, singing wildly something about Noah +and "the animals went in two by, two, the elephant and the +kangaroo." + +He stopped as suddenly as he began and walked me to the door +again. + +"We've got 'em in the ark," he said, "but I'm thinking this forty +days of snow is nearly over, Minnie. I don't think much of the +dove and the olive-branch, but WE'VE GOT TO KEEP THEM." + +"It's against the law," I quavered. + +"Nonsense!" he said. "We've got to make 'em WANT to stay!" + + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +BACK TO NATURE + +We gave them a good supper and Mr. Pierce ordered claret served +without extra charge. By eight o'clock they were all in better +humor, and when they'd gathered in the lobby Miss Summers gave an +imitation of Marie Dressler doing the Salome dance. Every now +and then somebody would look out and say it was still snowing, +and with the memory of the drifts and the cold stove in the +railroad station behind them, they'd gather closer around the +fire and insist that they would go as soon as the road was +cleared. + +But with the exception of Mr. von Inwald, not one of them really +wanted to go. As Doctor Barnes said over the news stand, each +side was bluffing and wouldn't call the other, and the fellow +with the most nerve would win. + +"And, oh, my aunt!" he said, "what a sweet disposition +the von Inwald has! Watch him going up and banging his head +against the wall!" + +Everybody was charmed with the Salome dance, especially when Miss +Summers drew the cover off a meat platter she'd been dancing +around, and there was Arabella sitting on her hind legs, with a +card tied to her neck, and the card said that at eleven there +would be a clambake in the kitchen for all the guests. + +(The clambake was my idea, but the dog, of course, was Miss +Julia's. I never saw a woman so full of ideas, although it seems +that what should have been on the platter was the head of +somebody or other.) + +Just after the dance I saw Mr. von Inwald talking to Miss Patty. +He had been ugly all evening, and now he looked like a devil. +She stood facing him with her head thrown back and her fingers +twisting her ruby ring. I guessed that she was about as much +surprised as anything else, people having a habit of being +pleasant to her most of the time. He left her in a rage, and as +he went he collided with Arabella and kicked her. Miss Patty +went white but Miss Summers was not a bit put out. She +simply picked up the howling dog and confronted Mr. von Inwald. + +"Perhaps you didn't notice," she said sweetly, "but you kicked my +dog." + +"Why don't you keep her out of the way?" he snarled, and they +stood glaring at each other. + +"Under the circumstances, Arabella," Miss Julia said--and +everybody was listening--"we can only withdraw Mr. von Inwald's +invitation to the kitchen." + +"Thank you, I had not intended to go," he said furiously, and +went out into the veranda, slamming the door behind him. Mr. +Jennings looked up from where he was playing chess by the fire +and nodded at Miss Summers. + +"Serves him right for his temper!" he said. + +"Checkmate!" said the bishop. + +Mr. Jennings turned and glared at the board. Then with one sweep +he threw all the chessmen on the floor. As Tillie said later, it +would be a pity to spoil two houses with Mr. von Inwald and Mr. +Jennings If they were in the same family, they could work it off +on each other. + +Miss Patty came down to the news stand and pretended to hunt +for a magazine. I reached over and stroked her hand. "Don't +take it too hard, dearie," I said. "He's put out to-night, and +maybe he isn't well. Men are like babies. If their stomachs are +all right and have plenty in them, they're pleasant enough. It's +been my experience that your cranky man's a sick man." + +"I don't think he is sick, Minnie," she said, with a catch in her +voice. "I--I think he is just dev--devilish!" + +Well, I thought that too, so I just stroked her hand, and after a +minute she got her color again. "It is hard for him," she said. +"He thinks this is all vulgar and American, and--oh, Minnie, I +want to get away, and yet what shall I do without you to keep me +sensible." + +"You'll be a long ways off soon," I said, touching the ring under +my hand. + +"I wish you could come with me," she said, but I shook my head. + +"Here is one dog that isn't going to sit under any rich man's +table and howl for crumbs," I answered. "If he kicked ME, I'd +bite him." + +At eleven o'clock we had the clambake with beer in the +kitchen, and Mr. von Inwald came, after all. They were really +very cheerful, all of them. Doctor Barnes insisted that Senator +Biggs must not fast any longer, and he ate by my count three +dozen clams. At the end, when everybody was happy and everything +forgiven, Mr. Pierce got up and made a speech. + +He said he was sorry for what had happened that day, but that +much he had said he still maintained: that to pretend to make +people well in the way most sanatoriums did it was sheer folly, +and he felt his responsibility too keenly to countenance a system +that was clearly wrong and that the best modern thought +considered obsolete. + +Miss Cobb sat up at that; she is always talking about the best +modern thought. + +He said that perfect health, clear skins, bright eyes--he looked +at the women, and except for Miss Patty, there wasn't an honest +complexion or a bright eye in the lot--keen appetites and joy of +living all depended on rational and simple living. + +"Hear, hear!" said the men. + +"The nearer we live to nature, the better," said Senator Biggs +oracularly. + +"Back to nature," shouted Mr. Moody through a clam. + +"Exactly," Mr. Pierce said, smiling. + +Mrs. Moody looked alarmed. "You don't mean doing without +clothes--and all that!" she protested. + +"Surely!" Miss Summers said, holding up her beer glass. "A +toast, everybody! Back to nature, sans rats, sans rouge, sans +stays, sans everything. I'll need to wear a tag with my name on +it. Nobody will recognize me!" + +Mr. Pierce got up again at the head of the long kitchen table and +said he merely meant rational living--more air, more exercise, +simpler food and better hours. It was being done now in a +thousand fresh-air farms, and succeeding. Men went back to their +business clearer-headed and women grew more beautiful. + +At that, what with the reaction from sitting in the cold station, +and the beer and everything, they all grew enthusiastic. Doctor +Barnes made a speech, telling that he used to be puny and weak, +and how he went into training and became a pugilist, and how he'd +fought the Tennessee something or other--the men nodded as if +they knew--and licked him in forty seconds or forty rounds, +I'm not sure which. The men were standing on their chairs +cheering for him, and even Mr. Jennings, who'd been sitting and +not saying much, said he thought probably there was something in +it. + +They ended by agreeing to try it out for a week, beginning with +the morning, when everybody was to be down for breakfast by +seven-thirty. Mr. Thoburn got up and made a speech, protesting +that they didn't know what they were letting themselves in for, +and ended up by demanding to know if he was expected to breakfast +at seven-thirty. + +"Yes, or earlier," Mr. Pierce said pleasantly. "I suppose you +could have something at seven." + +"And suppose I refuse?" he retorted disagreeably. + +But everybody turned on him, and said if they could do it, he +could, and he sat down again. Then somebody suggested that if +they were to get up they'd have to go to bed, and the party broke +up. + +Doctor Barnes helped me gather up the clam shells and the plates. + +"It's a risky business," he said. "To-night doesn't mean +anything; they're carried away by the reaction and the +desire for something new. The next week will tell the tale." + +"If we could only get rid of Mr. Thoburn!" I exclaimed. +Doctor Barnes chuckled. + +"We may not get rid of him," he said, "but I can promise him the +most interesting week of his life. He'll be too busy for +mischief. I'm going to take six inches off his waist line." + +Well, in a half-hour or so I had cleared away, and I went out to +the lobby to lock up the news stand. Just as I opened the door +from the back hall, however, I heard two people talking. + +It was Miss Pat and Mr. Pierce. She was on the stairs and he in +the hall below, looking up. + +"I don't WANT to stay!" she was saying. + +"But don't you see?" he argued. "If you go, the others will. +Can't you try it for a week?" + +"I quite understand your motive," she said, looking down at him +more pleasantly than she'd ever done, "and it's very good of you +and all that. But if you'd only left things as they were, and +let us all go, and other people come--" + +"That's just it," he said. "I'm told it's the bad season +and nobody else would come until Lent. And, anyhow, it's not +business to let a lot of people go away mad. It gives the place +a black eye." + +"Dear me," she said, "how businesslike you are growing!" + +He went over close to the stairs and dropped his voice. + +"If you want the bitter truth," he went on, trying to smile, +"I've put myself on trial and been convicted of being a fool and +a failure. I've failed regularly and with precision at +everything I have tried. I've been going around so long trying +to find a place that I fit into, that I'm scarred as with many +battles. And now I'm on probation--for the last time. If this +doesn't go, I--I--" + +"What?" she asked, leaning down to him. "You'll not--" + +"Oh, no," he said, "nothing dramatic, of course. I could go +around the country in a buggy selling lightning-rods--" + +She drew herself back as if she resented his refusal of her +sympathy. + +"Or open a saloon in the Philippines!" he finished mockingly. +"There's a living in that." + +"You are impossible," she said, and turned away. + +Oh, I haven't any excuse to make for him! I think he was just +hungry for her sympathy and her respect, knowing nothing else was +coming to him. But the minute they grew a bit friendly he seemed +to remember the prince, and that, according to his idea of it, +she was selling herself, and he would draw off and look at her in +a mocking unhappy way that made me want to slap him. + +He watched her up the stairs and then turned and walked to the +fire, with his hands in his pockets and his head down. + +I closed the news stand and he came over just as I was hanging up +the cigar-case key for Amanda King in the morning. He reached up +and took the key off its nail. + +"I'll keep that," he said. "It's no tobacco after this, Minnie." + +"You can't keep them here, then," I retorted. "They've got to +smoke; it's the only work they do." + +"We'll see," he said quietly. "And--oh, yes, Minnie, now that we +shall not be using the mineral spring--" + +"Not use the mineral spring!" I repeated, stupefied. + +"Certainly NOT!" he said. "This is a drugless sanatorium, +Minnie, from now on. That's part of the theory--no drugs." + +"Well, I'll tell you one thing," I snapped, "theory or no theory, +you've got to have drugs. No theory that I ever heard of is +going to cure Mr. Moody's indigestion and Miss Cobb's neuralgia." + +"They won't have indigestion and neuralgia." + +"Or Amanda King's toothache." + +"We won't have Amanda King." + +He put his elbow on the stand and smiled at me. + +"Listen, Minnie," he said. "If you hadn't been wasting your +abilities in the mineral spring, I'd be sorry to close it. But +there will be plenty for you to do. Don't you know that the day +of the medicine-closet in the bath-room and the department-store +patent-remedy counter is over? We've got sanatoriums now instead +of family doctors. In other words, we put in good sanitation +systems and don't need the plumber and his repair kit." + +"The pharmacy?" I said between my teeth. + +"Closed also. No medicine, Minnie. That's our slogan. This is +the day of prophylaxis. The doctors have taken a step in the +right direction and are giving fewer drugs. Christian Science +has abolished drugs and established the healer. We simply +abolish the healer." + +"If we're not going to use the spring-house, we might have saved +the expense of the new roof in the fall," I said bitterly. + +"Not at all. For two hours or so a day the spring-house will be +a rest-house--windows wide open and God's good air penetrating to +fastnesses it never knew before." + +"The spring will freeze!" + +"Exactly. My only regret is that it is too small to skate on. +But they'll have the ice pond." + +"When I see Mr. Moody skating on the ice pond," I said +sarcastically, "I'll see Mrs. Moody dead with the shock on the +bank." + +"Not at all," he replied calmly. "You'll see her skating, too." +And with that he went to bed. + + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +LIKE DUCKS TO WATER + +They took to it like ducks take to water. Not, of course, that +they didn't kick about making their own beds and having military +discipline generally. They complained a lot, but when after +three days went by with the railroad running as much on schedule +as it ever does, they were all still there, and Mr. Jennings had +limped out and spent a half-hour at the wood-pile with his gouty +foot on a cushion, I saw it was a success. + +I ought to have been glad. I was, although when Mrs. Dicky found +they were all staying, and that she might have to live in the +shelter-house the rest of the winter, there was an awful scene. +I was glad, too, every time I could see Mr. Thoburn's gloomy +face, or hear the things he said when his name went up for the +military walk. + +(Oh yes, we had a blackboard in the hall, and every morning each +guest looked to see if it was wood-pile day or +military-walk day. At first, instead of wood-pile, it was walk- +clearing day, but they soon had the snow off all the paths.) + +As I say, I was glad. It looked as if the new idea was a +success, although as Doctor Barnes said, nobody could really tell +until new people began to come. That was the real test. They +had turned the baths into a gymnasium and they had beginners' +classes and advanced classes, and a prize offered on the +blackboard of a cigar for the man who made the most muscular +improvement in a week. The bishop won it the first week, being +the only one who could lie on his back and raise himself to a +sitting position without helping himself with his hands. As Mrs. +Moody said, it would be easy enough if somebody only sat on one's +feet to hold them down. + +But I must say I never got over the shock of seeing the spring- +house drifted with snow, all the windows wide open, the spring +frozen hard, and people sitting there during the rest hour, in +furs and steamer rugs, trying to play cards with mittens on-- +their hands, not the cards, of course--and not wrangling. I was +lonesome for it! + +I hadn't much to do, except from two to four to be at the +spring-house, and to count for the deep-breathing exercise. Oh, +yes, we had that, too! I rang a bell every half-hour and +everybody got up, and I counted slowly "one" and they breathed in +through their noses, and "two" and they exhaled quickly through +their mouths. I guess most of them used more of their lungs than +they ever knew they had. + +Well, everybody looked better and felt better, although they +wouldn't all acknowledge it. Miss Cobb suffered most, not having +the fire log to curl her hair with. But as she said herself, +between gymnasium and military walks, and the silence hour, and +eating, which took a long time, everybody being hungry--and going +to bed at nine, she didn't see how she could have worried with +it, anyhow. The fat ones, of course, objected to an apple and a +cup of hot water for breakfast, but except Mr. Thoburn, they all +realized it was for the best. He wasn't there for his health, he +said, having never had a sick day in his life, but when he saw it +was apple and hot water or leave, he did like Adam--he took the +apple. + +The strange thing of all was the way they began to look up +to Mr. Pierce. He was very strict; if he made a rule, it was +obey or leave. (As they knew after Mr. Moody refused to take the +military walk, and was presented with his bill and a railroad +schedule within an hour. He had to take the military walk with +Doctor Barnes that afternoon alone.) They had to respect a man +who could do all the things in the gymnasium that they couldn't, +and come in from a ten or fifteen-mile tramp through the snow and +take a cold plunge and a swim to rest himself. + +It was on Monday that we really got things started, and on Monday +afternoon Miss Summers came out to the shelter-house in a +towering rage. + +"Where's Mr. Pierce?" she demanded. + +"I guess you can see he isn't here," I said. + +"Just wait until I see him!" she announced. "Do you know that I +am down on the blackboard for the military walk to-day? + +"Why not?" + +She turned and glared at me. "Why not?" she repeated. "Why, the +audacity of the wretch! He brings me out into the country in +winter to play in his atrocious play, strands me, and then tells +me to walk twenty miles a day and smile over it!" She came +over to me and shook my arm. "Not only that," she said, "but he +has cut out my cigarettes and put Arabella on dog biscuit-- +Arabella, who can hardly eat a chicken wing." + +"Well, there's something to be thankful for," I said. "He didn't +put you on dog biscuit." + +She laughed then, with one of her quick changes of humor. + +"The worst of it is," she said, in a confidential whisper, "I'll +do it. I feel it. I guess if the truth were known I'm some +older than he is, but--I'm afraid of him, Minnie. Little Judy is +ready to crawl around and speak for a cracker or a kind word. +Oh, I'm not in love with him, but he's got the courage to say +what he means and do what he says." + +She went to the door and looked back smiling. + +"I'm off for the wood-pile," she called back. "And I've promised +to chop two inches off my heels." + +As I say, they took to it like ducks to water--except two of +them, von Inwald and Thoburn. Mr. von Inwald stayed on, I hardly +know why, but I guess it was because Mr. Jennings still +hadn't done anything final about settlements, and with the +newspapers marrying him every day it wasn't very comfortable. +Next to him, Mr. Thoburn was the unhappiest mortal I have ever +seen. He wouldn't leave, and with Doctor Barnes carrying out his +threat to take six inches off his waist, he stopped measuring +window-frames with a tape line and took to measuring himself. + +I came across him on Wednesday--the third day--straggling home +from the military walk. He and Mr. von Inwald limped across the +tennis-court and collapsed on the steps of the spring-house while +the others went on to the sanatorium. I had been brushing the +porch, and I leaned on my broom and looked at them. + +"You're both looking a lot better," I said. "Not so--well, not +so beer-y. How do you like it by this time?" + +"Fine!" answered Mr. Thoburn. "Wouldn't stay if I didn't like +it." + +"Wouldn't you?" + +"But I'll tell you this, Minnie," he said, changing his position +with a groan to look up at me, "somebody ought to warn that +young man. Human nature can stand a lot but it can't stand +everything. He's overdoing it!" + +"They like it," I said. + +"They think they do," he retorted. "Mark my words, Minnie, if he +adds another mile to the walk to-morrow there will be a mutiny. +Kingdoms may be lost by an extra blister on a heel." + +Mr. von Inwald had been sitting with his feet straight out, +scowling, but now he turned and looked at me coolly. + +"All that keeps me here," he said, "is Minnie's lovely hair. It +takes me mentally back home, Minnie, to a lovely lady--may I have +a bit of it to keep by me?" + +"You may not," I retorted angrily. + +"Oh! The lovely lady--but never mind that. For the sake of my +love for you, Minnie, find me a cigarette, like a good girl! I +am desolate." + +"There's no tobacco on the place," I said firmly, and went on +with my sweeping. + +"When I was a boy," Mr. Thoburn remarked, looking out +thoughtfully over the snow, "we made a sort of cigarette out of +corn-silk. You don't happen to have any corn-silk about, do +you, Minnie?" + +"No," I said shortly. "If you take my advice, Mr. Thoburn, +you'll go back to town. You can get all the tobacco you want +there--and you're wasting your time here." I leaned on my broom +and looked down at him, but he was stretching out his foot and +painfully working his ankle up and down. + +"Am I?" he asked, looking at his foot. "Well, don't count on it +too much, Minnie. You always inspire me, and sitting here I've +just thought of something." + +He got up and hobbled off the porch, followed by Mr. von Inwald. +I saw him say something to Mr. von Inwald, who threw back his +head and laughed. Then I saw them stop and shake hands and go on +again in deep conversation. I felt uneasy. + + +Doctor Barnes came out that afternoon and watched me while I +closed the windows. He had a package in his hand. He sat on the +railing of the spring and looked at me. + +"You're not warmly enough dressed for this kind of thing," +he remarked. "Where's that gray rabbits' fur, or whatever it +is?" + +"If you mean my chinchillas," I said, "they're in their box. +Chinchillas are as delicate as babies and not near so plentiful. +I'm warm enough." + +"You look it." He reached over and caught one of my hands. "Look +at that! Blue nails! It's about four degrees above zero here, +and while the rest are wrapped in furs and steamer rugs, with +hotwater bottles at their feet, you've got on a shawl. I'll bet +you two dollars you haven't got on any--er--winter flannels." + +"I never bet," I retorted, and went on folding up the steamer +rugs. + +"I'd like to help," he said, "but you're so darned capable, Miss +Minnie--" + +"You might see if you can get the slot-machine empty," I said. +"It's full of water. It wouldn't work and Mr. Moody thought it +was frozen. He's been carrying out boiling water all afternoon. +If it stays in there and freezes the thing will explode." + +He wasn't listening. He'd been fussing with his package and now +he opened it and handed it to me, in the paper. + +"It's a sweater," he said, not looking at me. "I bought it for +myself and it was too small-- Confound it, Minnie, I wish I +could lie! I bought them for you! There's the whole business-- +sweater, cap, leggings and mittens. Go on! Throw them at me!" + +But I didn't. I looked at them, all white and soft, and it came +over me suddenly how kind people had been lately, and how much +I'd been getting--the old doctor's waistcoat buttons and Miss +Pat's furs, and now this! I just buried my face in them and +cried. + +Doctor Barnes stood by and said nothing. Some men wouldn't have +understood, but he did. After a minute or so he came over and +pulled the sweater out from the bundle. + +"I'm glad you like 'em," he said, "but as I bought them at +Hubbard's, in Finleyville, and as the old liar guaranteed they +wouldn't shrink, we'd better not cry on 'em." + +Well, I put them on and I was warmer and happier than I had been +for some time. But that night when I went out to the shelter- +house with the supper basket I found both the honeymooners in a +wild state of excitement. They said that about five o'clock +Thoburn had gone out to the shelter-house and walked all around +it. Finally he had stopped at one of the windows of the other +room, had worked at it with his penknife and got it open, and +crawled through. They sat paralyzed with fright, and heard him +moving around the other room, and he even tried their door. But +it had been locked. They hadn't the slightest idea what he was +doing, but after perhaps ten minutes he went away, going out the +door this time and taking the key with him. + +Mr. Dick had gone in when he was safely gone, but he could see +nothing unusual, except that the door of the cupboard in the +corner was standing open and there was a brand-new, folding, foot +rule in it. + +That day the bar was closed for good, and there was a good bit of +fussing. To add to the trouble, that evening at dinner the +pastries were cut off, and at eight o'clock a delegation headed +by Senator Biggs visited Mr. Pierce in the office and demanded +pastry put back on the menu and the stewed fruit taken off. But +Mr. Pierce was firm and they came out pretty well subdued. +It was that night, I think, that candles were put in the +bedrooms, and all the electric lights were turned off at nine- +thirty. + +At ten o'clock I took my candle and went to Mr. Pierce's sitting- +room door. I didn't think they'd stand much more and I wanted to +tell him so. Nobody answered and I opened the door. He was +asleep, face down on the hearth-rug in front of the fire. His +candle was lighted on the floor beside him and near it lay a +newspaper cutting crumpled in a ball. I picked it up. It was a +list of the bridal party for Miss Patty's wedding. + +I dropped it where I found it and went out and knocked again +loudly. He wakened after a minute and came to the door with the +candle in his hand. + +"Oh, it's you, Minnie. Come in!" + +I went in and put my candle on the table. + +"I've got to talk to you," I said. "I don't mind admitting +things have been going pretty well, but--they won't stand for the +candles. You mark my words." + +"If they'll stand for the bar being closed, why not the candles?" +he demanded. + +"Well," I said, "they can't have electric light sent up in +boxes and labeled `books,' but they can get liquor that way." + +He whistled, and then he laughed. + +"Then we'll not have any books," he said. "I guess they can +manage. `My only books were woman's looks--'" and then he saw +the ball of paper on the floor and his expression changed. He +walked over and picked it up, smoothing it out on the palm of his +hand. + +After a minute he looked up at me. + +"I haven't been to the shelter-house to-day. They are all +right?" + +"They're nervous. With everybody walking these days they daren't +venture a nose out of doors." + +He was still holding the clipping. + +"And--Miss Jennings!" he said. "She--I think she looks better." + +"Her father's in a better humor for one thing--says Abraham +Lincoln split logs, and that it beats massage." + +I had been standing in the doorway, but he took me by the arm and +drew me into the room. + +"I wish you'd sit down for about ten minutes, Minnie," he +said. "I guess every fellow has a time when he's got to tell his +troubles to some good woman--not but that you know mine already. +You're as shrewd as you are kind." + +I sat down on the edge of a chair. For all I had had so much to +do with the sanatorium, I never forgot that I was only the +spring-house girl. He threw himself back in his easy chair, with +the candle behind him on the table and his arms above his head. + +"It's like this, Minnie," he said. "Mr. Jennings likes the new +order of things and--he's going to stay." + +I nodded. + +"And I like it here. I want to stay. It's the one thing I've +found that I think I can do. It isn't what I've dreamed of, but +it's worth while. To anchor the derelicts of humanity in a sort +of repair dock here, and scrape the barnacles off their +dispositions, and send them out shipshape again, surely that's +something. And I can do it." + +I nodded again. + +"But if the Jenningses stay--" he looked at me. "Minnie, in +heaven's name, what am I going to do if SHE stays?" + +"I don't know, Mr. Pierce," I said. "I couldn't sleep last night +for thinking about it." + +He smoothed out the paper and looked at it again, but I think he +scarcely saw it. + +"The situation is humorous," he said, "only my sense of humor +seems to have died. She doesn't know I exist, except to invent +new and troublesome regulations for her annoyance. She is very +sweet when she meets me, but only because I am helping her to +have her own way. And I--my God, Minnie, I sit in the office and +listen for her step outside!" + +He moved a little and held out the paper in the candle-light. + +"`It will please Americans to know,'" he read, "`that with the +exception of the Venetian lace robe sent by the bridegroom's +mother, all of Miss Patricia Jennings' elaborate trousseau is +being made in America. + +"`Prince Oskar and his suite, according to present arrangements, +will sail from Naples early in March, and the wedding date, +although not yet definitely fixed, will probably be the first +week in April. The wedding party will include--'" + +He stopped there, and looked at me, trying to smile. + +"I knew it all before," he said, "but there's something +inevitable about print. I guess I hadn't realized it." + +He had the same look of wretchedness he'd had the first night I +saw him--a hungry look--and I couldn't help it; I went over to +him and patted him on the head like a little boy. I was only the +spring-house girl, but I was older than he was, and he needed +somebody to comfort him. + +"I can't think of anything to say that will help any," I said, +"unless it's what you wrote yourself on the blackboard down in +the hall, `Keep busy and you'll keep happy.'" + +He reached up for my hand, and rough and red as it was--having +been in the spring for so many years--he kissed it. + +"Good for you, Minnie!" he said. "You're rational, and for a day +or so I haven't been. That's right, KEEP BUSY. I'll do it." +He got up and put his hands on my shoulders. "Good old pal, when +you see me going around as if all the devils of hell were +tormenting me, just come up and say that to me, will you?" + +I promised, and he opened the door, candle in hand, and smiling. + +"I'm a thousand per cent. better already," he said. "I just +needed to tell somebody, I think. I dare say I've made a lot +more fuss than it really deserves." + +At the far end of the hall, a girl came out of one room, and +carrying a candle, went across to another. It was Miss Patty, +going to bid her father good night. When I left, he was still +staring down the hall after her, his candle dripping wax on the +floor, and his face white. I guess he hadn't overstated his +case. + + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + +THE FIRST FRUITS + +By Friday of that week you would hardly have known any of them. +The fat ones were thinner and the thin ones fatter, and Miss +Julia Summers could put her whole hand inside her belt. + +And they were pleasant. They'd sit down to a supper of ham and +eggs and apple sauce, and yell for more apple sauce, and every +evening in the billiard room they got up two weighing pools, one +for the ones who wanted to reduce, and one for the people who +wanted to gain. Everybody put in a dollar, and at gymnasium hour +the next morning the ones who'd gained or lost the most won the +pool. Mr. Thoburn won the losing pool on Thursday and Friday--he +didn't want to lose weight, but he was compelled to under the +circumstances. And I think worry helped him to it. + +They fussed some still about sleeping with the windows +open, especially the bald-headed men. However, the bishop, who +had been bald for thirty years, was getting a fine down all over +the top of his head, and this encouraged the rest. The bishop +says it is nature's instinct to protect itself from cold--all +animals have fur, and heavier fur in winter--and he believed that +it was the ultimate cure for baldness. Men lose their hair on +top, he said, because they wear hats, and so don't need it. But +let the top of the head need protection, and lo, hair comes +there. Although, as Mr. Thoburn said, his nose was always cold +in winter, and nature never did anything for IT. + +Mr. von Inwald was still there, and not troubling himself to be +agreeable to any but the Jennings family. He and Mr. Pierce +carefully avoided each other, but I knew well enough that only +policy kept them apart. Both of them, you see, were working for +something. + +Miss Cobb came to the spring-house early Friday morning, and from +the way she came in and shut the door I knew she had something on +her mind. She walked over to where I was polishing the brass +railing around the spring--it had been the habit of years, +and not easy to break--and stood looking at me and breathing +hard. + +"Minnie," she exclaimed, "I have found the thief!" + +"Lord have mercy!" I said, and dropped the brass polish. + +"I have found the thief!" she repeated firmly. "Minnie, our sins +always find us out." + +"I guess they do," I said shakily, and sat down on the steps to +the spring. "Oh, Miss Cobb, if only he would use a little bit of +sense!" + +"He?" she said. "HE nothing! It's that Summers woman I'm +talking about, Minnie. I knew that woman wasn't what she ought +to be the minute I set eyes on her." + +"The Summers woman!" I repeated. + +Miss Cobb leaned over the railing and shook a finger in my face. + +"The Summers woman," she said. "One of the chambermaids found +my--my PROTECTORS hanging in the creature's closet!" + +I couldn't speak. There had been so much happening that I'd +clean forgotten Miss Cobb and her woolen tights. And now to have +them come back like this and hang themselves around my neck, +so to speak--it was too much. + +"Per--perhaps they're hers," I said weakly after a minute. + +"Stuff and nonsense!" declared Miss Cobb. "Don't you think I +know my own, with L. C. in white cotton on the band, and my own +darning in the knee where I slipped on the ice? And more than +that, Minnie, where those tights are, my letters are!" + +I glanced at the pantry, where her letters were hidden on the +upper shelf. The door was closed. + +"But--but what would she want with the letters?" I asked, with my +teeth fairly hitting together. Miss Cobb pushed her forefinger +into my shoulder. + +"To blackmail me," she said, in a tragic voice, "or perhaps to +publish. I've often thought of that myself--they're so +beautiful. Letters from a life insurance agent to his lady- +love--interesting, you know, and alliterative. As for that +woman--!" + +"What woman!" said Miss Summers' voice from behind us. We jumped +and turned. "I always save myself trouble, so if by any chance +you are discussing me--" + +"As it happens," Miss Cobb said, glaring at her, "I WAS +discussing you." + +"Fine!" said Miss Julia. "I love to talk about myself." + +"I doubt if it's an edifying subject," Miss Cobb snapped. + +Miss Julia looked at her and smiled. + +"Perhaps not," she said, "but interesting. Don't put yourself +out to be friendly to me, Miss Cobb, if you don't feel like it." + +"Are you going to return my letters?" Miss Cobb demanded. + +"Your letters?" + +"My letters--that you took out of my room!" + +"Look here," Miss Julia said, still in a good humor, "don't you +suppose I've got letters of my own, without bothering with +another woman's?" + +"Perhaps," Miss Cobb replied in triumph, "perhaps you will say +that you don't know anything of my--of my black woolen +protectors?" + +"Never heard of them!" said Miss Summers. "What are they?" And +then she caught my eye, and I guess I looked stricken. "Oh!" she +said. + +"Miss Cobb was robbed the other night," I explained, as quietly +as I could. "Somebody went into her room and took a bundle of +letters." + +"Letters!" Miss Summers straightened and looked at me. + +"And my woolen tights," said Miss Cobb indignantly, "with all +this cold weather and military walks, and having to sit two hours +a day by an open window! And I'll tell you this, Miss Summers, +your dog got in my room that night, and while I have no +suspicions, the chambermaid found my--er--missing garment this +morning in your closet!" + +"I don't believe," Miss Julia said, looking hard at me, "that +Arabella would steal anything so--er--grotesque! Do you mean to +say," she added slowly, "that nothing was taken from that room +but the--lingerie and a bundle of letters?" + +"Exactly," said Miss Cobb, "and I'd thank you for the letters." + +"The letters!" Miss Julia retorted. "I've never been in your +room. I haven't got the letters. I've never seen them." Then a +light dawned in her face. "I--oh, it's the funniest ever!" + +And with that she threw her head back and laughed until the tears +rolled down her cheeks and she held her side. + +"Screaming!" she gasped. "It's screaming! But, oh, Minnie, to +have seen your face!" + +Miss Cobb swept to the door and turned in a fury. + +"I do not think it is funny," she stormed, "and I shall report to +Mr. Carter at once what I have discovered." + +She banged out, and Miss Julia put her head on a card-table and +writhed with joy. "To have seen your face, Minnie!" she panted, +wiping her eyes. "To have thought you had Dick Carter's letters, +that I keep rolled in asbestos, and then to have opened them and +found they were to Miss Cobb!" + +"Be as happy as you like," I snapped, "but you are barking up the +wrong tree. I don't know anything about any letters and as far +as that goes, do you think I've lived here fourteen years to get +into the wrong room at night? If I'd wanted to get into your +room, I'd have found your room, not Miss Cobb's." + +She sat up and pulled her hat straight, looking me right in the +eye. + +"If you'll recall," she said, "I came into the spring-house, and +Arabella pulled that--garment of Miss Cobb's off a table. It was +early--nobody was out yet. You were alone, Minnie, or no," she +said suddenly, "you were not alone. Minnie, WHO was in the +pantry?" + +"What has that to do with it?" I managed, with my feet as cold as +stone. + +She got up and buttoned her sweater. + +"Don't trouble to lie," she said. "I can see through a stone +wall as well as most people. Whoever got those letters thought +they were stealing mine, and there are only two people who would +try to steal my letters; one is Dick Carter, and the other is his +brother-in-law. It wasn't Sam in the pantry--he came in just +after with his little snip of a wife." + +"Well?" I managed. + +But she was smiling again, not so pleasantly. + +"I might have known it!" she said. "What a fool I've been, +Minnie, and how clever you are under that red thatch of yours! +Dicky can not appear as long as I am here, and Pierce takes his +place, and I help to keep the secret and to play the game! Well, +I can appreciate a joke on myself as well as most people, +but--Minnie, Minnie, think of that guilty wretch of a Dicky +Carter shaking in the pantry!" + +"I don't know what you are talking about," I said, but she only +winked and went to the door. + +"Don't take it too much to heart," she advised. "Too much +loyalty is a vice, not a virtue. And another piece of advice, +Minnie--when I find Dicky Carter, stand from under; something +will fall." + +They had charades during the rest hour that afternoon, the +overweights headed by the bishop, against the underweights headed +by Mr. Moody. They selected their words from one of Horace +Fletcher's books, and as Mr. Pierce wasn't either over or +underweight, they asked him to be referee. + +Oh, they were crazy about him by that time. It was "Mr. Carter" +here and "dear Mr. Carter" there, with the women knitting him +neckties and the men coming up to be bullied and asking for more. + +And he kept the upper hand, too, once he got it. It was that +day, I think, that he sent Senator Biggs up to make his bed +again, and nobody in the place will ever forget how he made old +Mr. Jennings hang his gymnasium suit up three times before it was +done properly. The old man was mad enough at the time, but +inside of twenty minutes he was offering Mr. Pierce the cigar +he'd won in the wood-chopping contest. + +But if Mr. Pierce was making a hit with the guests, he wasn't so +popular with the Van Alstynes or the Carters. The night the +cigar stand was closed Mr. Sam came to me and leaned over the +counter. + +"Put the key in a drawer," he said. "I can slip down here after +the lights are out and get a smoke." + +"Can't do it, Mr. Van Alstyne," I said. "Got positive orders." + +"That doesn't include me." He was still perfectly good-humored. + +"Sorry," I said. "Have to have a written order from Mr. Pierce." + +He put a silver dollar on the desk between us and looked at me +over it. + +"Will that open the case?" he asked. But I shook my head. + +"Well, I'll be hanged! What the devil sort of order did he give +you?" + +"He said," I repeated, "that I'd be coaxed and probably bribed to +open the cigar case, and that you'd probably be the first +one to do it, but I was to stick firm; you've been smoking too +much, and your nerves are going." + +"Insolent young puppy!" he exclaimed angrily, and stamped away. + +So that I was not surprised when on that night, Friday, I was +told to be at the shelter-house at ten o'clock for a protest +meeting. Mrs. Sam told me. + +"Something has to be done," she said. "I don't intend to stand +much more. Nobody has the right to say when I shall eat or what. + +If I want to eat fried shoe leather, that's my affair." + +We met at ten o'clock at the shelter-house, everybody having gone +to bed--Miss Patty, the Van Alstynes and myself. The Dickys were +on good terms again, for a wonder, and when we went in they were +in front of the fire, she on a box and he at her feet, with his +head buried in her lap. He didn't even look up when we entered. + +"They're here, Dicky," she said. + +"All right!" he answered in a smothered voice. "How many of +'em?" + +"Four," she said, and kissed the tip of his ear. + +"For goodness sake, Dick!" Mrs. Sam snapped in a disgusted +tone, "stop that spooning and get us something to sit on." + +"Help yourself," he replied, still from his wife's lap, "and +don't be jealous, sis. If the sight of married happiness upsets +you, go away. Go away, anyhow." + +Mr. Sam came over and jerked him into a sitting position. +"Either you'll sit up and take part in this discussion," he said +angrily, "or you'll go out in the snow until it's over." + +Mr. Dick leaned over and kissed his wife's hand. + +"A cruel fate is separating us," he explained, "but try to endure +it until I return. I'll be on the other side of the fireplace." + +Miss Patty came to the fire and stood warming her hands. I saw +her sister watching her. + +"What's wrong with you, Pat?" she asked. "Oskar not behaving?" + +"Don't be silly," Miss Patty said. "I'm all right." + +"She's worked to death," Mrs. Sam put in. "Look at all of us. +I'll tell you I'm so tired these nights that by nine o'clock I'm +asleep on my feet." + +"I'm tired to death, but I don't sleep," Miss Patty said. "I--I +don't know why." + +"I do," her sister said. "If you weren't so haughty, Pat, and +would just own up that you're sick of your bargain--" + +"Dolly!" Miss Patty got red and then white. + +"Oh, all right," Mrs. Dicky said, and shrugged her shoulders. +"Only, I hate to see you make an idiot of yourself, when I'm so +happy." + +Mr. Dick made a move at that to go across the fireplace to her, +but Mr. Sam pushed him back where he was. + +"You stay right there," he said. "Here's Pierce now." + +He came in smiling, and as he stood inside the door, brushing the +snow off, it was queer to see how his eyes went around the circle +until he'd found Miss Patty and stopped at her. + +Nobody answered his smile, and he came over to the fire beside +Miss Patty. + +"Great night!" he said, looking down at her. "There's something +invigorating in just breathing that wind." + +"Do you think so?" Mrs. Sam said disagreeably. "Of course, we +haven't all got your shoulders." + +"That's so," he answered, turning to her. "I said you women +should not come so far. We could have met in my sitting-room." + +"You forget one thing," Mr. Dick put in disagreeably, "and that +is that this meeting concerns me, and I can not very well go to +YOUR sitting-room." + +"Fact," said Mr. Pierce, "I'd forgotten about you for the +moment." + +"You generally do," Mr. Dick retorted. "If you want the truth, +Pierce, I'm about tired of your high-handed methods." + +Mr. Pierce set his jaw and looked down at him. + +"Why? I've saved the place, haven't I? Why, look here," he +said, and pulled out a couple of letters, "these are the first +fruits of those that weep--in other words, per aspera ad astra! + +Two new guests coming the last of the week--want to be put in +training!" + +Well, that was an argument nobody could find fault with, but +their grievance was about themselves and they couldn't forgive +him. They turned on him in the most heartless way--even Miss +Patty--and demanded that he give them special privileges-- +breakfast when they wanted it, and Mr. Sam the key to the +bar. And he stood firm, as he had that day in the lobby, and let +the storm beat around him, looking mostly at Miss Patty. It was +more than I could bear. + +"Shame on all of you!" I said. "He's done what he promised he'd +do, and more. If he did what he ought, he'd leave this minute, +and let you find out for yourself what it is to drive thirty-odd +different stomachs and the same number of bad dispositions in one +direction." + +"You are perfectly right, Minnie," Miss Patty said. "We're +beastly, all of us, and I'm sorry." She went over and held out +her hand to him. "You've done the impossible," she told him. He +beamed. + +"Your approval means more than anything," he said, holding her +hand. Mrs. Dick sat up and opened her eyes wide. + +"Speaking of Oskar," she began, and then stopped, staring past +her sister, toward the door. + +We all turned, and there, blinking in the light, was Miss +Summers. + + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + +OVER THE FENCE IS OUT + +"WELL!" she said, and stood staring. Then she smiled--I guess +our faces were funny. + +"May I come in?" she asked, and without waiting she came in and +closed the door. "You DO look cozy!" she said, and shook +herself free of snow. + +Mr. Dick had turned white. He got up with his eyes on her, and +twice he opened his mouth and couldn't speak. He backed, still +watching her, to his wife, and stood in front of her, as if to +protect her. + +Mr. Sam got his voice first. + +"B--bad night for a walk," he said. + +"Frightful!" she said. "I've been buried to my knees. May I sit +down?" To those of us who knew, her easy manner had something +horrible in it. + +"Sorry there are no chairs, Julia," Mr. Pierce said. "Sit on the +cot, won't you?" + +"Who IS it?" Mrs. Dick asked from, as you may say, her +eclipse. She and Miss Summers were the only calm ones in the +room. + +"I--I don't know," Mr. Dick stammered, but the next moment Miss +Julia, from the cot, looked across at him and grinned. + +"Well, Dicky!" she said. "Who'd have thought it!" + +"You said you didn't know her!" his wife said from behind him. + +"Who'd have thought wha--what?" he asked with bravado. + +"All this!" Miss Julia waved her hand around the room, with its +bare walls, and blankets over the windows to keep the light in +and the cold out, and the circle of us sitting around on sand +boxes from the links and lawn rollers. "To find you here, all +snug in your own home, with your household gods and a wife." +Nobody could think of anything to say. "That is," she went on, +"I believe there is a wife. Good heavens, Dicky, it isn't +Minnie?" + +He stepped aside at that, disclosing Mrs. Dick on her box, with +her childish eyes wide open. + +"There--there IS a wife, Julia," he said. "This is her--she." + +Well, she'd come out to make mischief--it was written all over +her when she came in the door, but when Mr. Dick presented his +wife, frightened as he was and still proud of her, and Mrs. Dick +smiled in her pretty way, Miss Summers just walked across and +looked down at her with a queer look on her face. I shut my eyes +and waited for the crash, but nothing came, and when I opened +them again there were the two women holding hands and Miss +Summers smiling a sort of crooked grin at Mr. Dick. + +"I ought to be very angry with your husband," she said. "I-- +well, I never expected him to marry without my being among those +present. But since he has done it--! Dick, you wretched boy, +you took advantage of my being laid up with the mumps!" + +"Mumps!" Mrs. Dick said. "Why, he has just had them himself!" +She looked around the circle suspiciously, and every one of us +looked as guilty as if he had been caught with the mumps +concealed around him somewhere. + +"I didn't have real mumps," Mr. Dick explained. "It was only-- +er--a swelling." + +"You SAID it was mumps, and even now you hate pickles!" + +Mr. Pierce had edged over to Miss Summers and patted her +shoulder. + +"Be a good sport, Julia," he whispered. + +She threw off his hand. + +"I'm being an idiot!" she said angrily. "Dick's an ass, and he's +treated me like a villain, but look at that baby! It will be +twenty years before she has to worry about her weight." + +"I never cared for pickles," Mr. Dick was saying with dignity. +"The doctor said--" + +"I think we'd better be going." Miss Patty got up and gathered +up her cloak. But if she meant to break up the party Miss +Summers was not ready. + +"If you don't mind," she said, "I'll stay. I'm frozen, and I've +got to go home and sleep with my window up. You're lucky," she +went on to the Dickys. "I dare say the air in here would scare +us under a microscope, but at least it is warm." + +The Van Alstynes made a move to go, but Mr. Dicky +frantically gestured to them not to leave him alone, and Mrs. Sam +sat down again sulkily. Mr. Pierce picked up his cap. + +"I'll take you back," he said to Miss Patty, and his face was +fairly glowing. But Miss Patty slipped her arm through mine. + +"Come, Minnie, Mr. Pierce is going to take us," she said. + +"I'd--I'd rather go alone," I said. + +"Nonsense." + +"I'm not ready. I've got to gather up these dishes," I objected. + +Out of the corner of my eye I could see the glow dying out of Mr. +Pierce's face. But Miss Patty took my arm and led me to the +door. + +"Let them gather up their own dishes," she said. "Dolly, you +ought to be ashamed to let Minnie slave for you the way she does. + +Good night, everybody." + +I did my best to leave them alone on the way back, but Miss Patty +stuck close to my heels. It was snowing, and the going was slow. + +For the first five minutes she only spoke once. + +"And so Miss Summers and Dicky Carter are old friends!" + +"It appears so," Mr. Pierce said. + +"She's rather magnanimous, under the circumstances," Miss Patty +remarked demurely. + +"Under what circumstances?" + +I heard her laugh a little, behind me. + +"Never mind," she said. "You needn't tell me anything you don't +care to. But what a stew you must all have been in!" + +There was a minute's silence behind me, and then Mr. Pierce +laughed too. + +"Stew!" he said. "For the last few days I've been either +paralyzed with fright or electrified into wild bursts of +mendacity. And I'm not naturally a liar." + +"Really!" she retorted. "What an actor you are!" + +They laughed together at that, and I gained a little on them. At +the corner where the path skirted the deer park and turned toward +the house I lost them altogether and I floundered on alone. But +I had not gone twenty feet when I stopped suddenly. About fifty +yards ahead a lantern was coming toward me through the snow, and +I could hear a man's voice, breathless and gasping. + +"Set it down," it said. "The damned thing must be filled with +lead." It sounded like Thoburn. + +"It's the snow," another voice replied, Mr. von Inwald's. "I +told you it would take two trips." + +"Yes," Thoburn retorted, breathing in groans. "Stay up all night +to get the blamed stuff here, and then get up at dawn for a cold +bath and a twenty-mile walk and an apple for breakfast. Ugh, my +shoulder is dislocated." + +I turned and flew back to Miss Patty and Pierce. They had +stopped in the shelter of the fence corner and Mr. Pierce was on +his knees in front of her! I was so astounded that I forgot for +the moment what had brought me. + +"Just a second," he was saying. "It's ice on the heel." + +"Please get up off your knees, you'll take cold." + +"Never had a cold. I'll scrape it off with my knife. Why don't +you wear overshoes?" + +"I never have a cold!" she retorted. "Why, Minnie, is that you?" + +"Quick," I panted. "Thoburn and Mr. von Inwald coming--basket-- +lantern--warn the shelter-house!" + +"Great Scott I" Mr. Pierce said. "Here, you girls crawl over the +fence: you'll be hidden there. I'll run back and warn them." + +The lantern was swinging again. Mr. Thoburn's grumbling came to +us through the snow, monotonous and steady. + +"I can't climb the fence!" Miss Patty said pitifully. But Mr. +Pierce had gone. + +I reached my basket through the bars and climbed the fence in a +hurry. Miss Patty had got almost to the top and was standing +there on one snow-covered rail, staring across at me through the +darkness. + +"I can't, Minnie," she whispered hopelessly. "I never could +climb a fence, and in this skirt--!" + +"Quick!" I said in a low tone. The lantern was very close. "Put +your leg over." + +She did, and sat there looking down at me like a scared baby. + +"Now the other." + +"I--I can't!" she whispered. "If I put them both over I'll +fall." + +"Hurry!" + +With a little grunt she put the other foot over, sat a minute +with agony in her face and her arms out, then she slid off +with a squeal and brought up in a sitting position inside the +fence corner. I dropped beside her. + +"What was that noise?" said Mr. Thoburn, almost upon us. +"Something's moving inside that fence corner." + +"It's them deers," Mike's voice this time. We could make out the +three figures. "Darned nuisance, them deers is. They'd have +been shot long ago if the spring-house girl hadn't objected. She +thinks she's the whole cheese around here." + +"Set it down again," Mr. von Inwald panted. We heard the rattle +of bottles as they put down the basket, and the next instant +Thoburn's fat hand was resting on the rail of the fence over our +heads. I could feel Miss Patty trembling beside me. + +But he didn't look over. He stood there resting, breathing hard, +and swearing at the weather, while Mike waited, in surly silence, +and the von Inwald cursed in German. + +After my heart had been beating in my ears for about three years +the fat hand moved, and I heard the rattle of glass again and +Thoburn's groan as he bent over his half of the load. + + "`Come on, my partners in distress, + My comrades through this wilderness,'" + +he said, and the others grunted and started on. + +When they had disappeared in the snow we got out of our cramped +position and prepared to scurry home. I climbed the fence and +looked after them. "Humph!" I said, "I guess that basket isn't +for the hungry poor. I'd give a good bit to know--" Then I +turned and looked for Miss Patty. She was flat on the snow, +crawling between the two lower rails of the fence. + +"Have you no shame?" I demanded. + +She looked up at me with her head and half her long sealskin coat +through the fence. + +"None," she said pitifully. "Minnie, I'm stuck perfectly tight!" + +"You ought to be left as you are," I said, jerking at her, "for +people to come"--jerk--"to-morrow to look at"--jerk. She came +through at that, and we lay together in the snow and like to +burst a rib laughing. + +"You'll never be a princess, Miss Patty," I declared. "You're +too lowly minded." + +She sat up suddenly and straightened her sealskin cap on her +head. + +"I wish," she said unpleasantly, "I wish you wouldn't always drag +in disagreeable things, Minnie!" + +And she was sulky all the way to the house. + +Miss Summers came to my room that night as I was putting my hot- +water bottle to bed, in a baby-blue silk wrapper with a band of +fur around the low neck--Miss Summers, of course, not the hot- +water bottle. + +"Well!" she said, sitting down on the foot of the bed and staring +at me. "Well, young woman, for a person who has never been +farther away than Finleyville you do pretty well!" + +"Do what?" I asked, with the covers up to my chin. + +"Do what, Miss Innocence!" she said mockingly. "You're the only +red-haired woman I ever saw who didn't look as sophisticated as +the devil. I'll tell you one thing, though." She reached down +into the pocket of her dressing-gown and brought up a cigarette +and a match. "You never had me fooled for a minute!" She looked +at me over the match. + +I lay and stared back. + +"And another thing," she said. "I never had any real intention +of marrying Dicky Carter and raising a baby sanatorium. I +wouldn't have the face to ask Arabella to live here." + +"I'm glad you feel that way, Miss Summers," I said. "I've gone +through a lot; I'm an old woman in the last two weeks. My hair's +falling from its having to stand up on end half the time." + +She leaned over and put her cigarette on the back of my celluloid +mirror, and then suddenly she threw back her head and laughed. + +"Minnie!" she said, between fits, "Minnie! As long as I live +I'll never forget that wretched boy's face! And the sand boxes! +And the blankets over the windows! And the tarpaulin over the +rafters! And Mr. Van Alstyne sitting on the lawnmower! I'd +rather have had my minute in that doorway than fifty thousand +dollars!" + +"If you had had to carry out all those things--" I began, but she +checked me. + +"Listen!" she said. "Somebody with brains has got to take you +young people in hand. You're not able to look after yourselves. +I'm fond of Alan Pierce, for one thing, and I don't care to +see a sanatorium that might have been the child of my solicitude +kidnaped and reared as a summer hotel by Papa Thoburn. A good +fat man is very, very good, Minnie, but when he is bad he is +horrid." + +"It's too late," I objected feebly. "He can't get it now." + +"Can't he!" She got up and yawned, stretching. "Well, I'll lay +you ten to one that if we don't get busy he'll have the house +empty in thirty-six hours, and a bill of sale on it in as many +days." + +The celluloid mirror blazed up at that minute, and she poured the +contents of my water-pitcher over the dresser. For the next +hour, while I was emptying water out of the bureau drawers and +hanging up my clothes to dry, she told me what she knew of +Thoburn's scheme, and it turned me cold. + +But I went to bed finally. Just as I was dozing off, somebody +opened my door, and I heard a curious scraping along the floor. +I turned on the light, and there was Arabella, half-dragging and +half-carrying a solid silver hand-mirror with a card on it: "To +Minnie, to replace the one that blew up. J. S." + + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + +A CUPBOARD FULL OF RYE + +Doctor Barnes came to me at the news stand the next morning +before gymnasium. + +"Well," he said, "you look as busy as a dog with fleas. Have you +heard the glad tidings?" + +"What?" I asked without much spirit. "I've heard considerable +tidings lately, and not much of it has cheered me up any." + +He leaned over and ran his fingers up through his hair. + +"You know, Miss Minnie," he said, "somebody ought kindly to kill +our friend Thoburn, or he'll come to a bad end." + +"Shall I do it, or will you?" I said, filling up the chewing-gum +jar. (Mr. Pierce had taken away the candy case.) + +Doctor Barnes glanced around to see if there was any one near, +and leaned farther over. + +"The cupboard isn't empty now!" he said. "Not for nothing did I +spend part of the night in the Dicky-bird's nest! By the way, +did you ever hear that touching story about little Sally walking +up and laying an egg?--I see you have. What do you think is in +the cupboard?" + +"I know about it," I said shortly. "Liquor--in a case labeled +`Books--breakable.'" + +"`Sing a song of sixpence, a cupboard full of rye!'" he said. +"Almost a goal! But not ONLY liquors, my little friend. +Champagne--cases of it--caviar, canned grouse with truffles, +lobster, cheeses, fine cigars, everything you could think of, +erotic, exotic and narcotic. An orgy in cans and bottles, a +bacchanalian revel: a cupboard full of indigestion, joy, +forgetfulness and katzenjammer. Oh, my suffering palate, to +have to leave it all without one sniff, one sip, one nibble!" + +"He's wasting his money," I said. "They're all crazy about the +simple life." + +He looked around and, seeing no one in the lobby, reached over +and took one of my hands. + +"Strange," he said, looking at it. "No webs, and yet it's been +an amphibious little creature most of its life. My dear +girl, our friend Thoburn is a rascal, but he is also a student of +mankind and a philosopher. Gee," he said, "think of a woman +fighting her way alone through the world with a bit of a fist +like that!" + +I jerked my hand away. + +"It's like this, my dear," he said. "Human nature's a curious +thing. It's human nature, for instance, for me to be crazy about +you, when you're as hands-offish as a curly porcupine. And it is +human nature, by the same token, to like to be bullied, +especially about health, and to respect and admire the fellow who +does the bullying. That's why we were crazy about Roosevelt, and +that's why Pierce is trailing his kingly robes over them while +they lie on their faces and eat dirt--and stewed fruit." + +He reached for my hand again, but I put it behind me. + +"But alas," he said, "there is another side to human nature, and +our friend Thoburn has not kept a summer hotel for nothing. It +is notoriously weak, especially as to stomach. You may feed 'em +prunes and whole-wheat bread and apple sauce, and after a while +they'll forget the fat days, and remember only the lean and +hungry ones. But let some student of human nature at the proper +moment introduce just one fat day, one feast, one revel--" + +"Talk English," I said sharply. + +"Don't break in on my flights of fancy," he objected. "If you +want the truth, Thoburn is going to have a party--a forbidden +feast. He's going to rouse again the sleeping dogs of appetite, +and send them ravening back to the Plaza, to Sherry's and Del's +and the little Italian restaurants on Sixth Avenue. He's going +to take them up on a high mountain and show them the wines and +delicatessen of the earth, and then ask them if they're going to +be bullied into eating boiled beef and cabbage." + +"Then I don't care how soon he does it," I said despondently. +"I'd rather die quickly than by inches." + +"Die!" he said. "Not a bit of it. Remember, our friend Pierce +is also a student of human nature. He's thinking it out now in +the cold plunge, and I miss my guess if Thoburn's sky-rocket +hasn't got a stick that'll come back and hit him on the head." + +He had been playing with one of the chewing-gum jars, and when he +had gone I shoved it back into its place. It was by the +merest chance that I glanced at it, and I saw that he had slipped +a small white box inside. I knew I was being a silly old fool, +but my heart beat fast when I took it out and looked at it. On +the lid was written "For a good girl," and inside lay the red +puffs from Mrs. Yost's window down in Finleyville. Just under +them was an envelope. I could scarcely see to open it. + + +"Dearest Minnie," the note inside said, "I had them matched to my +own thatch, and I think they'll match yours. And since, in the +words of the great Herbert Spencer, things that match the same +thing match each other--! What do you say?--Barnes." + +"P. S.--I love you. I feel like a damn fool saying it, but +heaven knows it's true." + +"P. P. S.--Still love you. It's easier the second time." + +"N. B.--I love you--got the habit now and can't stop writing +it.--B." + + +Well, I had to keep calm and attend to business, but I was +seething inside like a Seidlitz powder. Every few minutes I'd +reread the letter under the edge of the stand, and the more I +read it the more excited I got. When a woman's gone past thirty +before she gets her first love-letter, she isn't sure +whether to thank providence or the man, but she's pretty +sure to make a fool of herself. + +Thoburn came to the news stand on his way out with the ice- +cutting gang to the pond. + +"Last call to the dining-car, Minnie," he said. "`Will you-- +won't you--will you--won't you--will you join the dance?'" + +"I haven't any reason for changing my plans," I retorted. "I +promised the old doctor to stick by the place, and I'm sticking." + +"As the man said when he sat down on the flypaper. You're going +by your heart, Minnie, and not by your head, and in this toss, +heads win." + +But with my new puffs on the back of my head, and my letter in my +pocket, I wasn't easy to discourage. Thoburn shouldered his pick +and, headed by Doctor Barnes, the ice-cutters started out in +single file. As they passed the news stand Doctor Barnes glanced +at me, and my heart almost stopped. + +"Do they--is it a match?" he asked, with his eyes on mine. + +I couldn't speak, but I nodded "yes," and all that afternoon I +could see the wonderful smile that lit up his face as he +went out. It made him almost good-looking. Oh, there's nothing +like love, especially if you've waited long enough to be hungry +for it, and not spoiled your taste for it by a bite here and a +piece of a heart there, beforehand, so to speak. + +Miss Cobb stopped at the news stand on her way to the gymnasium. +She was a homely woman at any time, and in her bloomers she +looked like a soup-bone. Under ordinary circumstances she'd have +seen the puffs from the staircase and have asked what they cost +and told me they didn't match, in one breath. But she had +something else on her mind. She padded over to the counter in +her gym shoes, and for once she'd forgotten her legs. + +"May I speak to you, Minnie?" she asked. + +"You mostly do," I said. "There isn't a new rule about speaking, +is there?" + +"This is important, Minnie," she said, rolling her eyes around as +she always did when she was excited. "I'm in such a state of +ex--I see you bought the puffs! Perhaps you will lend them to me +if we arrange for a country dance." + +"They don't match," I objected. "They--they wouldn't look +natural, Miss Cobb." + +"They don't look natural on you, either. Do you suppose anybody +believes that the Lord sent you hair in seventeen rows of pipes, +so that, red as it is, it looks like an instantaneous water- +heater?" + +"I'm not lending them," I said firmly. It would have been like +lending an engagement ring, to my mind. Miss Cobb was not +offended. She went at once to what had brought her, and bent +over the counter. + +"Where's the Summers woman?" she asked. + +"In the gym. She's made herself a new gym suit out of her polka +dotted silk, and she looks lovely." + +"Humph!" retorted Miss Cobb. "Minnie, you love Miss Jennings +almost like a daughter, don't you?" + +"Like a sister, Miss Cobb," I said. "I'm not feeble yet." + +"Well, you wouldn't want to see her deceived." + +"I wouldn't have it," I answered. + +"Then what do you call this?" She put a small package on the +counter, and stared at me over it. "There's treachery here, +black treachery." She pointed one long thin forefinger at the +bundle. + +"What is it? A bomb?" I asked, stepping back. More than +once it had occurred to me that having royalty around sometimes +meant dynamite. Miss Cobb showed her teeth. + +"Yes, a bomb," she said. "Minnie, since that creature took my +letters and my er--protectors, I have suspected her. Now listen. + +Yesterday I went over the letters and I missed one that beautiful +one in verse, beginning, `Oh, creature of the slender form and +face!' Minnie, it had disappeared--melted away." + +"I'm not surprised," I said. + +"And so, last night, when the Summers woman was out, goodness +knows where, Blanche Moody and I went through her room. We did +not find my precious missive from Mr. Jones, but we did find +these, Minnie, tied around with a pink silk stocking." + +"Heavens!" I said, mockingly. "Not a pink silk!" + +"Pink," she repeated solemnly. "Minnie, I have felt it all +along. Mr. Oskar von Inwald is the prince himself." + +"No!" + +"Yes. And more than that, he is making desperate love to +Miss Summers. Three of those letters were written in one day! +Why, even Mr. Jones--" + +"The wretch!" I cried. I was suddenly savage. I wanted to take +Mr. von Inwald by the throat and choke him until his lying tongue +was black, to put the letters where Miss Patty could never see +them. I wanted--I had to stop to sell Senator Biggs some +chewing-gum, and when he had gone, Miss Cobb was reaching out for +the bundle. I snatched it from her. + +"Give me those letters instantly," she cried shrilly. But I +marched from behind the counter and over to the fireplace. + +"Never," I said, and put the package on the log. When they were +safely blazing, I turned and looked at Miss Cobb. + +"I'd put my hand right beside those letters to save Miss Patty a +heartache," I said, "and you know it." + +"You're a fool." She was raging. "You'll let her marry him and +have the heartaches afterward." + +"She won't marry him," I snapped, and walked away with my chin +up, leaving her staring. + +But I wasn't so sure as I pretended to be. Mr. von Inwald and +Mr. Jennings had been closeted together most of the morning, and +Mr. von Inwald was whistling as he started out for the military +walk. It seemed as if the very thing that had given Mr. Pierce +his chance to make good had improved Mr. Jennings' disposition +enough to remove the last barrier to Miss Jennings' wedding with +somebody else. + +Well, what's one man's meat is another man's poison. + + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + +LOVE, LOVE, LOVE + +Even if we hadn't known, we'd have guessed there was something in +the air. There was an air of subdued excitement during the rest +hour in the spring-house, and a good bit of whispering and +laughing, in groups which would break up with faces as long as +the moral law the moment they saw my eye on them. + +They were planning a mutiny, as you may say, and I guess no +sailors on a pirate ship were more afraid of the captain's fist +than they were of Mr. Pierce's disapproval. He'd been smart +enough to see that most of them, having bullied other people all +their lives, liked the novelty of being bullied themselves. And +now they were getting a new thrill by having a revolt. They were +terribly worked up. + +Miss Patty stayed after the others had gone, sitting in front of +the empty fireplace in the same chair Mr. Pierce +usually took, and keeping her back to me. When I'd finished +folding the steamer rugs and putting them away, I went around and +stood in front of her. + +"Your eyes are red," I remarked. + +"I've got a cold." She was very haughty. + +"Your nose isn't red," I insisted. "And, anyhow, you say you +never have a cold." + +"I wish you would let me alone, Minnie." She turned her back to +me. "I dare say I may have a cold if I wish." + +"Do you know what they are saying here?" I demanded. "Do you +know that Miss Cobb has found out in some way or other who Mr. +von Inwald is? And that the four o'clock gossip edition says +your father has given his consent and that you can go and buy a +diadem or whatever you are going to wear, right off?" + +"Well," she said, in a choked voice, with her back to me, "what +of it? Didn't you and Mr. Pierce both do your best to bring it +about?" + +"Our what?" I couldn't believe my ears. + +"You made father well. He's so p--pleasant he'll do anything +except leave this awful place!" + +"Well, of all the ungrateful people--" I began, and then Mr. +Pierce came in. He had a curious way of stopping when he saw +her, as if she just took the wind out of his sails, so to speak, +and then of whipping off his hat, if anything with sails can wear +a hat, and going up to her with his heart in his eyes. He always +went straight to her and stopped suddenly about two feet away, +trying to think of something ordinary to say. Because the +extraordinary thing he wanted to say was always on the end of his +tongue. + +But this day he didn't light up when he saw her. He went through +all the other motions, but his mouth was set in a straight line, +and when he came close to her and looked down his eyes were hard. + +It's been my experience of men that the younger they are the +harder they take things and the more uncompromising they are. It +takes a good many years and some pretty hard knocks to make +people tolerant. + +"I was looking for you," he said to her. "The bishop has just +told me. There are no obstacles now." + +"None," she said, looking up at him with wretchedness in her +eyes, if he had only seen. "I am very happy." + +"She was just saying," I said bitterly, "how grateful she was to +both of us." + +"I don't understand." + +"It is not hard to understand," she said, smiling. I wanted to +slap her. "Father was unreasonable because he was ill. You have +made him well. I can never thank you enough." + +But she rather overdid the joy part of it, and he leaned over and +looked in her face. + +"I think I'm stupid," he said. "I know I'm unhappy. But isn't +that what I was to do--to make them well if I could?" + +"How could anybody know--" she began angrily, and then stopped. +"You have done even more," she said sweetly. "You've turned them +into cherubims and seraphims. Butter wouldn't melt in their +mouths. Ugh! How I hate amiability raised to the NTH power!" + +He smiled. I think it was getting through his thick man's skull +that she wasn't so happy as she should have been, and he was +thrilled through and through. + +"My amiability must be the reason you dislike me!" he suggested. +They had both forgotten me. + +"Do I dislike you?" she asked, raising her eyebrows. "I never +really thought about it, but I'm sure I don't." She didn't look +at him, she looked at me. She knew I knew she lied. + +His smile faded. + +"Well," he said, "speaking of disliking amiability, you don't +hate yourself, I'm sure." + +"You are wrong," she retorted, "I loathe myself." And she walked +to the window. He took a step or two after her. + +"Why do it at all?" he asked in a low tone. "You don't love +him--you can't. And if it isn't love--" He remembered me +suddenly and stopped. + +"Please go on," she said sweetly from the window. "Do not mind +Minnie. She is my conscience, anyhow. She is always scolding +me; you might both scold in chorus." + +"I wouldn't presume to scold." + +"Then give me a little advice and look superior and righteous. +I'm accustomed to that also." + +"As long as you are in this mood, I can't give you anything but a +very good day," he said angrily, and went toward the door. +But when he had almost reached it he turned. + +"I will say this," he said, "you have known for three days that +Mr. Thoburn was going to have a supper to-night, and you didn't +let us know. You must have known his purpose." + +I guess I was as surprised as she was. I'd never suspected she +knew. + +She looked at him over her shoulder. + +"Why shouldn't he have a supper?" she demanded angrily. "I'm +starving--we're all starving for decent food. I'm kept here +against my will. Why shouldn't I have one respectable meal? You +with your wretched stewed fruits and whole-wheat breads! Ugh!" + +"I'm sorry. Thoburn's idea, of course, is to make the guests +discontented, so they will leave." + +"Oh!" she said. She hadn't thought of that, and she flushed. +"At least," she said, "you must give me credit for not trying to +spoil Dick and Dolly's chance here." + +"We are going to allow the party to go on," he said, still stiff +and uncompromising. It would have been better if he'd accepted +her bit of apology. + +"How kind of you! I dare say he would have it, anyhow." She was +sarcastic again. + +"Probably. And you--will go?" + +"Certainly." + +"Even when the result--" + +"Oh, don't preach!" she said, putting her hands to her ears. "If +you and Minnie want to preach, why don't you preach at each +other? Minnie talks `love, love, love.' And you preach health +and morality. You drive me crazy between you." + +"Suppose," he said with a gleam in his eyes, "suppose I preach +`love, love, love!'" + +She put her fingers in her ears again. "Say it to Minnie," she +cried, and turned her back to him. + +"Very well," he said. "Minnie, Miss Jennings refuses to listen, +and there are some things I must say. Once again I am going to +register a protest against her throwing herself away in a +loveless marriage. I--I feel strongly on the subject, Minnie." + +She half turned, as if to interrupt. Then she thought better of +it and kept her fingers in her ears, her face flushed. But he +had learned what he hoped--that she could hear him. + +"You ask me why I feel so strongly, Minnie, and you are +right to ask. Under ordinary circumstances, Minnie, any remark +of mine on the subject would be ridiculous impertinence." + +He stopped and eyed her back, but she did not move. + +"It is impertinence under any circumstances, but consider the +provocation. I see a young, beautiful and sensitive girl, +marrying, frankly without love, a man whom I know to be unworthy, +and you ask me to stand aside and allow it to happen!" + +"Are you still preaching?" she asked coldly over her shoulder. +"It must be a long sermon." + +And then, knowing he had only a moment more, his voice changed +and became deep and earnest. His hands, that were clutching a +chair-back, took a stronger hold, so that the ends of the nails +were white. + +"You see, Minnie," he said, turning a little pale, "I--I love +Miss Jennings myself. You have known it a long time, for you +love her, too. It has come to the point that I measure the day +by the hours when I can see her. She doesn't care for me; +sometimes I think she hates me." He paused here, but Miss Patty +didn't move. "I haven't anything to offer a woman except a +clean life and the kind of love that a woman could be proud of. +I have no title--" + +Miss Patty suddenly took her fingers out of her ears and turned +around. She was flushed and shaken, but she looked past him +without blinking an eyelash to me. + +"Dear me," she said, "the sermon must have been exciting, Minnie! + +You are quite trembly!" + +And with that she picked up her muff and went out, with not a +glance at him. + +He looked at me. + +"Well," he said, "THAT'S over. She's angry, Minnie, and +she'll never forgive me." + +"Stuff!" I snapped, "I notice she waited to hear it all, and no +real woman ever hated a man for saying he loved her," + + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + +A BIG NIGHT TO-NIGHT + +I carried out the supper to the shelter-house as usual that +night, but I might have saved myself the trouble. Mrs. Dicky was +sitting on a box, with her hair in puffs and the folding card- +table before her, and Mr. Dick was uncorking a bottle of +champagne with a nail. There were two or three queer-smelling +cans open on the table. + +Mrs. Dick looked at my basket and turned up her nose. + +"Put it anywhere, Minnie," she said loftily, "I dare say it +doesn't contain anything reckless." + +"Cold ham and egg salad," I said, setting it down with a slam. +"Stewed prunes and boiled rice for dessert. If those cans taste +as they smell, you'd better keep the basket to fall back on. +Where'd you get THAT?" Mr. Dick looked at me over +the bottle and winked. "In the next room," he said, "iced to the +proper temperature, paid for by somebody else, and coming after a +two-weeks' drought! Minnie, there isn't a shadow on my joy!" + +"He'll miss it," I said. But Mr. Dick was pouring out three +large tumblersful of the stuff, and he held one out to me. + +"Miss it!" he exclaimed. "Hasn't he been out three times to-day, +tapping his little CACHE? And didn't he bring out Moody and +the senator and von Inwald this afternoon, and didn't they sit in +the next room there from two to four, roaring songs and cracking +bottles and jokes." + +"Beasts!" Mrs. Dicky said savagely. "Two hours, and we daren't +move!" + +"Drink, pretty creature!" Mr. Dick said, motioning to my glass. +"Don't be afraid of it, Minnie; it's food and drink." + +"I don't like it," I said, sipping at it. "I'd rather have the +spring water." + +"You'll have to cultivate a taste for it," he explained. "You'll +like the second half better." + +I got it down somehow and started for the door. Mr. Dick +came after me with something that smelled fishy on the end of a +fork. + +"Better eat something," he suggested. "That was considerable +champagne, Minnie." + +"Stuff and nonsense," I said. "I was tired and it has rested me. + +That's all, Mr. Dick." + +"Sure?" + +"Certainly," I said with dignity, "I'm really rested, Mr. Dick. +And happy--I'm very happy, Mr. Dick." + +"Perhaps I'd better close the door," he said. "The light may be +seen--" + +"You needn't close it until I've finished talking," I said. +"I've done my best for you and yours, Mr. Dick. I hope you +appreciate it. Night after night I've tramped out here through +the snow, and lost sleep, and lied myself black in the face-- +you've no idea how I've had to lie, Mr. Dick." + +"Come in and shut the door, Dick," Mrs. Dick called, "I'm +freezing." + +That made me mad. + +"Exactly," I said, glaring at her through the doorway. +"Exactly--I can wade through the snow, bringing you meals that +you scorn--oh, yes, you scorn them. What did you do to the +basket tonight? Look at it, lying there, neglected in a corner, +with p--perfectly good ham and stewed fruit in it." + +All of a sudden I felt terrible about the way they had treated +the basket, and I sat down on the steps and began to cry. I +remember that, and Mr. Dick sitting down beside me and putting +his arm around me and calling me "good old Minnie," and for +heaven's sake not to cry so loud. But I was past caring. I had +a sort of recollection of his getting me to stand up, and our +walking through about twenty-one miles of snow to the spring- +house. When we got there he stood off in the twilight and looked +at me. + +"I'm sorry, Minnie," he said, "I never dreamed it would do that." + +"Do what?" + +"Nothing. You're sure you won't forget?" + +"I never forget," I said. I had got up the steps by this time +and was trying to figure why the spring-house door had two knobs. + +I hadn't any idea what he meant. + +"Remember," he said, very slowly, "Thoburn is going to have his +party to-night instead of to-morrow. Tell Pierce that. To- +night, not to-morrow." I was pretty well ashamed when I got in +the spring-house and sat down in the dark. I kept saying over +and over to myself, so I'd not forget, "tonight, not to-morrow," +but I couldn't remember WHAT was to be to-night. I was +sleepy, too, and my legs were cold and numb. I remember going +into the pantry for a steamer rug, and sitting down there for a +minute, with the rug around my knees before I started to the +house. And that is all I DO remember. + + +I was wakened by a terrible hammering in the top of my head. I +reached out for the glass of water that I always put beside my +bed at night and I touched a door-knob instead. Then I realized +that the knocking wasn't all in my head. There was a sort of +steady movement of feet on the other side of the door, with +people talking and laughing. And above it all rose the steady +knock--knock of somebody beating on tin. + +"Can't do it." It was the bishop's voice. "I am convinced that +nothing but dynamite will open this tin of lobster." + +"Just a moment, Bishop," Mr. Thoburn's voice and the clink of +bottles, "I have a can opener somewhere. You'll find the sauce a +la Newburg--" + +"Here, somebody, a glass, quick! A bottle's broken!" + +"Did anybody remember to bring salt and pepper?" + +"DEAR Mr. Thoburn!" It sounded like Miss Cobb. "Think of +thinking of all this!" + +"The credit is not mine, dear lady," Mr. Thoburn said. "Where +the deuce is that corkscrew? No, dear lady, man makes his own +destiny, but his birth date remains beyond his control." + +"Ladies and gentlemen," somebody said, "to Mr. Thoburn's birthday +being beyond his control!" + +There was the clink of glasses, but I had remembered what it had +been that I was to remember. And now it was too late. I was +trapped in the pantry of my spring-house and Mr. Pierce was +probably asleep. I clutched my aching head and tried to think. +I was roused by hearing somebody say that Miss Jennings had no +glass, and by steps nearing the pantry. I had just time to slip +the bolt. + +"Pantry's locked !" said a voice. + +"Drat that Minnie!" somebody else said. "The girl's a nuisance." + +"Hush!" Miss Summers said. "She's probably in there now--taking +down what we say and what we eat. Convicting us out of our own +mouths." + +I held my breath and the knob rattled. Then they found a glass +for Miss Patty and forgot the pantry. + +Under cover of the next burst of noises I tried the pantry +window, but it was frozen shut. Nothing but a hammer would have +loosened it. I began to dig at it with a wire hairpin, but I +hadn't much hope. + +The fun in the spring-house was getting fast and furious. Miss +Summers was leaning against the pantry door and I judged that +most of the men in the room were around her, as usual. I put my +ear to the panel of the door, and I could pretty nearly see what +was going on. They were toasting Mr. Thoburn, and getting +hungrier every minute as the supper was put out on the card- +tables. + +"To the bottle!" somebody said. "In infancy, the milk bottle; in +our prime, the wine bottle; in our dotage, the pill bottle." + +Mr. von Inwald came over and stood beside Miss Summers, and I +could hear every whisper. + +"I have good news for you," she said in an undertone. + +"Oh! And what?" + +"Sh! You may recall," she said, "the series of notes, letters, +epistles, with which you have been honoring me lately?" + +"How could I forget? They were written in my heart's blood!" + +"Indeed!" Her voice lifted its eyebrows, so to speak. "Well, +somebody got in my room last night and stole I dare say a pint of +your heart's blood. They're gone." + +He was pretty well upset, as he might be, and she stood by and +listened to the things he said, which, if they were as bad in +English as they sounded in German, I wouldn't like to write down. + +And when he cooled down and condensed, as you may say, into +English, he said Miss Jennings must have seen the letters, for +she would hardly speak to him. And Miss Summers said she hoped +Miss Jennings had--she was too nice a girl to treat shamefully. + +And after he had left her there alone, I heard a sort of +scratching on the door behind Miss Summers' back, and then +something being shoved under the door. I stooped down and picked +it up. It was a key! + +I struck a match, and I saw by the tag that it was the one to the +old doctor's rooms. I knew right off what it meant. Mr. Pierce +had gone to bed, or pretended to throw them off the track and +Thoburn had locked him in! Thoburn hadn't taken any chances. He +knew the influence Mr. Pierce had over them all, and he and his +champagne and tin cans had to get in their work before Mr. Pierce +had another chance at them. + +I had no time to wonder how Miss Summers knew I was in the +pantry. I tried the window again, but it wouldn't work. +Somebody in the spring-house was shouting, "`Hot butter blue +beans, please come to supper!'" and I could hear them crowding +around the tables. I worked frantically with the hairpin, and +just then two shadowy figures outside slipped around the corner +of the building. It was Mr. Pierce and Doctor Barnes! + +I darted back and put my ear to the door, but they did not come +in at once. Mr, Thoburn made a speech, saying how happy he +was that they were all well and able to go back to civilization +again, where the broiled lobster flourished like a green bay tree +and the prune and the cabbage were unknown. + +There was loud applause, and then Senator Biggs cleared his +throat. + +"Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished fellow guests," he began, "I +suggest a toast to the autocrat of Hope Springs. It is the only +blot on the evening, that, owing to the exigencies of the +occasion, he can not be with us. Securely fastened in his room, +he is now sleeping the sleep that follows a stomach attuned to +prunes, a mind attuned to rule." + +"Eat, drink and be merry!" somebody said, "for to-morrow you +diet!" + +There was a swish and rustle, as if a woman got up in a hurry. + +"Do you mean," said Miss Patty's clear voice, "that you have +dared to lock Mr. Pier--Mr. Carter in his room?" + +"My dear young lady," several of them began, but she didn't give +them time. + +"It is outrageous, infamous!" she stormed. I didn't need to see +her to know how she looked. + +"How DARE you! Suppose the building should catch fire!" + +"Fire!" somebody said in a bewildered voice. "My dear young +lady--" + +"Don't `my dear young lady' me," she said angrily. "Father, +Bishop, will you stand for this? Why, he may jump out the window +and hurt himself! Give me the key!" + +Miss Julia's fingers were beating a tatoo behind her, as if she +was afraid I might miss it. + +"If he jumps out he probably will hurt himself. It is impossible +to release him now, Miss Jennings, but if you insist we can have +a mattress placed under the window." + +"Thanks, Thoburn. It won't be necessary." The voice came from +the door, and a hush fell on the party. I slipped my bolt and +peeped out. Framed in the doorway was Mr. Pierce, with Doctor +Barnes looking over his shoulder. + +The people in the spring-house were abject. That's the only word +for it. Craven, somebody suggested later, and they were that, +too. They smiled sickly grins and tried to be defiant, and most +of them tried to put down whatever they held in their hands +and to look innocent. If you ever saw a boy when his school- +teacher asks him what he has in his mouth, and multiply the boy +thirty times in number and four times in size, you'll know how +they looked. + +Mr. Pierce never smiled. He wouldn't let them speak a word in +defense or explanation. He simply lined them up as he did at +gym, and sent them, one by one, to the corner with whatever they +had in their hands. He made Mr. Jennings give up a bottle of +anchovies that he'd stuffed in his pocket, and the bishop had to +come over with a cheese. + +And when it was all over, he held the door open and they went +back to the house. They fairly ducked past him in the doorway, +although he hadn't said a dozen words. It was a rout. The +backbone of the rebellion was broken. I knew that never again +would the military discipline of Hope Springs be threatened. +Thoburn might as well pack and go. It was Mr. Pierce's day. + +Mr. von Inwald was almost the last. He stood by, sneering, with +an open bottle of olives in his hand, watching the others go out. + +Mr. Pierce held the door open and eyed him. + +"I'll trouble you to put that bottle with the others, in the +corner," Mr. Pierce said sternly. + +They stood glaring at each other angrily. + +"And if I refuse?" + +"You know the rules here. If you refuse, there is a hotel at +Finleyville." + +Mr. von Inwald glanced past Mr. Pierce to where Doctor Barnes +stood behind him, with his cauliflower ear and his pugilist's +shoulders. Then he looked at the bottle in his hand, and from it +to Miss Patty, standing haughtily by. + +"I have borne much for you, Patricia," he said, "but I refuse to +be bullied any longer. I shall go to the hotel at Finleyville, +and I shall take the little olives with me." He smiled +unpleasantly at Mr. Pierce, whose face did not relax. + +He walked jauntily to the door and turned, flourishing the +bottle. "The land of the free and the home of the brave!" he +sneered, raising the bottle in the air. Standing jeering in the +doorway, he bowed to Miss Patty and Mr. Pierce, and put an olive +into his mouth. + +But instantly he made a terrible face, and clapped a hand +just in front of his left ear. He stood there a moment, his face +distorted--then he darted into +the night, and I never saw him again. + +"Mumps!" Doctor Barnes ejaculated, and stood staring after him +from the steps. + + + + + +CHAPTER XXX + +LET GOOD DIGESTION + +There was no one left but Miss Patty. As she started out past +him with a crimson spot in each cheek Mr. Pierce put his hand on +her arm. She hesitated, and he closed the door on Doctor Barnes +and put his back against it. I had just time to slip back into +the pantry and shut myself in. + +For a minute there wasn't a sound. Then-- + +"I told you I should come," Miss Patty said, in her haughtiest +manner. "You need not trouble to be disagreeable." + +"Disagreeable!" he repeated. "I am abject!" + +"I don't understand," she said. "But you needn't explain. It +really does not matter." + +"It matters to me. I had to do this to-night. I promised you I +would make good, and if I had let this pass--Don't you see, I +couldn't let it go." + +"You can let me go, now." + +"Not until I have justified myself to you." + +"I am not interested." + +I heard him take a step or two toward her. + +"I don't quite believe that," he said in a low tone. "You were +interested in what I said here this afternoon." + +"I didn't hear it." + +"None of it?" + +"Not--not all." + +"I spoke, you remember, about your sister, and about Dick--" he +paused. I could imagine her staring at him in her wide-eyed way. + +"You never mentioned them!" she said scornfully and stopped. He +laughed, a low laugh, boyish and full of triumph. + +"Ah!" he said. "So you DID hear! I'm going to say it again, +anyhow. I love you, Patty. I'm--I'm mad for you. I've loved +you hopelessly for so long that to-night, when there's a ray of +hope, I'm--I'm hardly sane. I--" + +"Please!" she said. + +"I love you so much that I waken at night just to say your +name, over and over, and when dawn comes through the windows--" + +"You don't know what you are saying!" she said wildly. "I am-- +still--" + +"I welcome the daylight," he went on, talking very fast, "because +it means another day when I can see you. If it sounds foolish, +it's--it's really lots worse than it sounds, Patty." + +The door opened just then, and Doctor Barnes' voice spoke from +the step. + +"I say," he complained, "you needn't--" + +"Get out!" Mr. Pierce said angrily, and the door slammed. The +second's interruption gave him time, I think, to see how far he'd +gone, and his voice, when he spoke again, was not so hopeful. + +"I'm not pleading my cause," he said humbly, "I know I haven't +any cause. I have nothing to offer you." + +"You said this afternoon," Miss Patty said softly, "that you +could offer me the--the kind of love that a woman could be proud +of." + +She finished off with a sort of gasp, as if she was shocked at +herself. I was so excited that my heart beat a tatoo against my +ribs, and without my being conscious of it, as you may say, +the pantry door opened about an inch and I found myself with an +eye to the crack. + +They were standing facing each other, he all flushed and eager +and my dear Miss Patty pale and trembly. But she wasn't shy. +She was looking straight into his eyes and her blessed lips were +quivering. + +"How can you care?" she asked, when he only stood and looked at +her. "I've been such a--such a selfish beast!" + +"Hush!" He leaned toward her, and I held my breath. "You are +everything that is best in the world, and I--what can I offer +you? I have nothing, not even this sanatorium! No money, no +title--" + +"Oh, THAT!" she interrupted, and stood waiting. "Well, you-- +you could at least offer yourself!" + +"Patty!" + +She went right over to him and put her hands on his shoulders. + +"And if you won't," she said, "I'll offer myself instead!" + +His arms went around her like a flash at that, and he kissed +her. I've seen a good many kisses in my day, the spring-house +walk being a sort of lover's lane, but they were generally of the +quick-get-away variety. This was different. He just gathered +her up to him and held her close, and if she was one-tenth as +much thrilled as I was in the pantry she'd be ready to die +kissing. + +Then, without releasing her, he raised his head, with such a look +of victory in his face that I still see it sometimes in my sleep, +and his eye caught mine through the crack. + +But if I'd looked to see him drop her I was mistaken. He drew +her up and kissed her again, but this time on the forehead. And +when he'd let her go and she had dropped into a chair and hid her +shining face against the back, as if she was ashamed, which she +might well be, he stood laughing over her bent head at me. + +"Come out, Minnie!" he called. "Come out and hear the good +news!" + +"Hear!" I said, "I've seen all the news I want." + +"Gracious!" Miss Patty said, and buried her head again. But he +had reached the shameless stage; a man who is really in love +always seems to get to that point sooner or later. He stooped +and +kissed the back of her neck, and if his hand shook when he pushed +in one of her shell hairpins it was excitement and not fright. + +"I hardly realize it, Minnie," he said. "I don't deserve her for +a minute." + +"Certainly not," I said. + +"He does." Miss Patty's voice smothered. Then she got up and +came over to me. + +"There is going to be an awful fuss, Minnie," she said. "Think +of Aunt Honoria--and Oskar!" + +"Let them fuss!" I said grandly. "If the worst comes, you can +spend your honeymoon in the shelter-house. I'm so used to +carrying meals there now that it's second nature." + +And at that they both made for me, and as Mr. Pierce kissed me +Doctor Barnes opened the door. He stood for a moment, looking +queer and wild, and then he slammed the door and we heard him +stamping down the steps. + +Mr. Pierce had to bring him back. + + +Well, that's all there is to it. The place filled up and stayed +filled, but not under Mr. Pierce. Mr. Jennings said ability +of his kind was wasted there, once the place was running, and set +him to building a railroad somewhere or other, with him and Miss +Patty living in a private car, and he carrying a portable +telephone with him so he can talk to her every hour or so. Mr. +Dick and his wife are running the sanatorium, or think they are. +Doctor Barnes is the whole place, really. Mr. Jennings was so +glad to have Miss Patty give up the prince and send him back +home, after he'd been a week in the hotel at Finleyville looking +as if his face would collapse if you stuck a pin in it--Mr. +Jennings was so happy, not to mention having worked off his gout +at the wood-pile, that he forgave the Dickys without any trouble, +and even went out and had a meal with them in the shelter-house +before they moved in, with Mr. Dick making the coffee. + +I miss the spring, as I said at the beginning. It is hard to +teach an old dog new tricks, but with Miss Patty happy, and with +Doctor Barnes around-- + +Thoburn came out the afternoon before he left, just after the +rest hour, and showed me how much too loose his waistcoat had +become. + +"I've lost, Minnie," he confessed. "Lost fifteen pounds and +the dream of my life. But I've found something, too." + +"What?" + +"My waist line!" he said, and threw his chest out. + +"You look fifteen years younger," I said, and at that he came +over to me and took my hand. + +"Minnie," he said, "maybe you and I haven't always agreed, but +I've always liked you, Minnie--always." + +"Thanks," I said, taking my hand away. + +"You've got all kinds of spirit," he said. "You've saved the +place, all right. And if you--if you tire of this, and want +another home, I've got one, twelve rooms, center hall, tiled +baths, cabinet mantels--I'd be good to you, Minnie. The right +woman could do anything with me." + +When I grasped what he meant, I was staggered. + +"I'm sorry," I explained, as gently as I could. "I'm--I'm going +to marry Doctor Barnes one of these days." + +He stared at me. Then he laughed a little and went toward the +door. + +"Barnes!" he said, turning. "Another redhead, by gad! Well, +I'll tell you this, young woman, you're red, but he's +redder. Your days for running things to suit yourself are over." + +"I'm glad of it," I retorted. "I want to be managed myself for a +change. Somebody," I said, "who won't be always thinking how he +feels, unless it's how he feels toward me." + +"Bah! He'll bully you." + +"`It's human nature to like to be bullied,'" I quoted. "And I +guess I'm not afraid. He's healthy and a healthy man's never a +crank." + +"A case of yours for health, eh?" he said, and held out his hand. + + +THE END + |