Where There's a Will Part 8

"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-k.n.o.b 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."