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 sh.o.r.e, 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. d.i.c.k will turn up tomorrow and say his calendar was a day slow."
I gave her a gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.ses.
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. d.i.c.k. Mr. Sam was keeping the lawyer, Mr.
St.i.tt, 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. St.i.tt had mixed all the cordials in the bar in a beer gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 sc.r.a.ped-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 d.i.c.ky 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. St.i.tt 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 gla.s.s 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.