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?
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.
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 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? Your 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.