s a.





WHERE THERE'S A WILL
!








"Not—not Dicky Carter!" she cried.


WHERE THERE'S
A WILL
BY MARY(ROBERTS) R1NEHART
Author of "The Window at the White Cat," "The Man
in Lower Ten," "When a Man Marries," etc.
A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York


Copyright 1912
The Bobbs-Merrill Compact


CONTENTS
CHAPTER
PAGE
I
I Have a Warning » .
1
II
Miss Patty Arrives . «
. 12
III
A Will a . B
. 20
rv
And a Way
. 30
V
Wanted—An Owner . . .
. 43
VI
The Conspiracy .
. 54
VII
Mr. Pierce Acquires a Wife . .
. 62
VIII
And Mr. Moody Indigestion .
. 77
IX
Dolly, How Could You?
. 96
X
Another Complication ....
. 115
XI
Miss Patty's Prince .
. 126
XII
We Get a Doctor
. 140
XIII
The Prince—Principally . w .
. 152
XIV
Pierce Disapproves . .
. 161
XV
The Prince, With Apologies . .
. 170
XVI
Stop, Thief 1
. 177
XVII
A Bunch of Letters ....
. 187
XVIII
Miss Cobb's Burglar ....
. 198
XIX
No Marriage in Heaven
. 205
XX
Every Dog Has His Day
. 218
XXI
The Mutiny
. 228
XXII
Home to Roost
. 241
XXIII
Back to Nature
. 253
XXIV
Like Ducks to Water ....
. 265
XXV
The First Fruits . . . . .
. 282
XXVI
Over the Fence Is Out
. 297
XXVII
A Cupboard Full of Rye . . .
. 310
XXVIII
Love, Love, Love
. 321
XXIX
A Big Night To-night .
. 330
XXX
Let Good Digestion ....
. 344





WHERE
THERE'S A WILL

HEN it was all over Mr. Sam came out to
» w the spring-house to say good-by to me be-
fore he and Mrs. Sam left. I hated to see him go,
after all we had been through together, and I sup-
pose 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, asj
the sparks fly upward."
"Enjoyed it!" I snapped. "I'm an old woman be-
fore my time, Mr. Sam. What with trailing back

CHAPTER I
I HAVE A WARNING

I


2 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 be-
lieve 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."


I HAVE A WARNING 3
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


4 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
the spring-house on it, and me handing the old doc-
tor a glass of mineral water, and wearing the em-
broidered 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 fa-
ther 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


I HAVE A WARNING 5
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 fa-
ther! 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 wa-
ter 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 com-
mon. And when folks came back I could call them
at once. It would do your heart good to see some


6 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 rheuma-
tism 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 think-
ing 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


I HAVE A WARNING
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 ru-
mors 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


8 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
sent the prince, who was his cousin, for a Japanese
cruise, while the Jennings family was going to Mex-
ico in their private car. The old doctor was indig-
nant, 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 seen anything strange in his manner,
although we'd all noticed how feeble he was grow-
ing, 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,


I HAVE A WARNING 9
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 discour-
aged, 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."


io WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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
ft
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,


I HAVE A WARNING n
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 de-
pressed 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 nerv-
ous. 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
12


MISS PATTY ARRIVES
thinking to myself bitterly that all that my experi-
ence 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 em-
peror. 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 ar-
istocratic? 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


WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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," de-
clared 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 shoul-
der, "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


MISS PATTY ARRIVES 15
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.


16 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 in-
side 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 hold-
ing 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 be-
lieve in mixed marriages. I had a cousin that mar-
ried 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.


MISS PATTY ARRIVES
"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."


18 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"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 news-
papers." 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 Dor-
othy 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 drum-
mer 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 fora while."
And at that minute the door was flung open, and
Bath-house Mike staggered in.


MISS PATTY ARRIVES 19
"The old doctor!" he gasped. "He's dead, Miss
Minnie—died just now in the hot room in the bath-
house! 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 stam-
pede. 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 chamber-
maids find him there, and I wired to Mrs. Van Al-
styne, 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 hand-
kerchief and wiped her eyes I was almost overcome,
20


A WILL
21
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, look-
ing 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 waist-
coat buttons and a medical book. Well, that set of
buttons was the set he bought in London on his wed-
ding 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.


22 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"Everybody knows how loyal you've been, Min-
nie," 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 Al-
styne. 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 sanato-
rium 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


A WILL
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 under-
stand 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 Car-
ter run away from school, and twice his grand-
father 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 fur-
ther 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


A WILL
25
"You're getting careless, Minnie," he said, squint-
ing at it. "Some of those drugs ought to be dis-
solved 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!"


26 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"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," T saTd, 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 princi-
ples 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


A WILL 27
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 fu-


28 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
neral. 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."


A WILL
29
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
30


AND A WAY
31
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 Jen-
nings gets ugly and makes any sort of scandal it's
all off. A scandal just now would be fatal. These-
1 royalties are very touchy about other people's repu-
tations."
Well, I heard that often enough in the next few
days.


AND A WAY
33
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, ex-
cept 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 dis-
position.
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


34 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"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 rer.son some peo-
ple 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, "Pro-
fanity 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?"


AND A WAY
35
"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 Okla-
homa 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.


AND A WAY
37
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?"


38 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"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 to-
morrow 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


AND A WAY
39
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


40 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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.


AND A WAY
41
"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 treat-
ment, 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.


42 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 star-
ing at it as if she'd seen a ghost.


CHAPTER V
WANTED AN OWNER
IHAVE 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. / 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."
43


44 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"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 every-
body 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!
J'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.


WANTED—AN OWNER 45
"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 some-
thing 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.


46 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"There will be plenty of slaves to kiss this little
hand^ /here 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 sur-
prisingly 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 mis-
chief; 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


WANTED—AN OWNER 47
Mr. Dick, and that he had dropped right off the
earth, I just about gave up. He had got some de-
tectives, he said, and there was some sort ofTfttory
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 Tho-
burn 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 sit-
ting 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 fire-
light. Suddenly I seemed to feel somebody look-


48 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
ing at the back of my neck and I turned around.
There was a man standing outside one of the win-
dows, 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."


WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 lunch-
eon 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


To the best woman I have met in many days. 





WANTED—AN OWNER 51
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


WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 scan-
dal 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, includ-
ing 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


WANTED—AN OWNER 53
that meant a roof and something to eat—but I sup-
pose 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
54


THE CONSPIRACY 55
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


56 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 fire-
light-"
"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—"


58 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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.


THE CONSPIRACY
"I haven't anything to lose," he said, "and any-
how 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.


6o WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"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. "Fiddle-
sticks! She's not so good we can't replace her, and
what's the use of swallowing a camel and then stick-
ing 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


THE CONSPIRACY 61
my shawl and turned out the lights, I suddenly re-
membered. 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 na-
ture 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
62


MR. PIERCE ACQUIRES A WIFE 63
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.


64 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"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
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.


MR. PIERCE ACQUIRES A WIFE 65
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
1
awful. I
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


66 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 some-
where? 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, spread-
ing 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 under-
stand 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 re-
member the Austrian count who was a head waiter
here. If there was anything in the way of oscula-
tion 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,


MR. PIERCE ACQUIRES A WIFE 6?
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 there-
of."
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 be-
fore.
"Well," I said, "I guess you won't put a danc-
ing floor in the dining-room just yet, Mr. Tho-
burn."
"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


03 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
—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


MR. PIERCE ACQUIRES A WIFE 69
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 miser-
ably. "I—I assure you, I'm absolutely in the dark.
I don't know what's in the letter. I—I haven't al-
ways done what I should, I dare say, but my con-
duct in the state of Ohio during the last few
weeks has been without stain—unless I've forgot-
ten—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


7o -WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 look-
ing at her.
"I've brought your supper, Mr. Carter," I be-
gan. Then I stopped and stared at Miss Patty and
Mrs. Hutchins. "Oh," I said.
"Thank you," said Mr. Pierce, very uncomfort-
able. "Just put it down anywhere."


MR. PIERCE ACQUIRES A WIFE 71
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 room?
, 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 per-
sonal 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


72 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 rea-
son!" 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 sugges-
tion. 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 indigesti-
ble, 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, look-
ing back at him without a blink.
"Please don't look like that!" he begged. "I
-came in suddenly out of the darkness, and you—"


MR. PIERCE ACQUIRES A WIFE 73
"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 hold-
ing 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 un-
til she'd hardly need clothes! Well, a cat may
look at a king.
He went over to the fireplace, where I was put-
ting 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?"


74 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"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 pos-
sessor 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 wor-
rying.
"If we could only keep it hidden for a few days!"


MR. PIERCE ACQUIRES A WIFE 75
I said. "But, of course, the papers will get it, and
just now, with columns every day about Miss Pat-
ty's clothes—""Her what?"
"And all the princes of the blood sending pres-
ents, 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 news-
paper Miss Jennings," he said, and lighted a cigar-
ette 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


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 doc-
tor, 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 bed-
room slippers, "I didn't make him take clam chow-
der 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 sis-
77


78 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
ter 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 some-
times 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,"
Jie snarled. He had a fresh pain just then and


AND MR. MOODY INDIGESTION 79
stopped, clutching up the bottle. "Besides," he fin-
ished, 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 hold-
ing 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.


8o WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 MR. MOODY INDIGESTION 81
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, wad-
ing in deep snow to get there—and if you have ever
done that in a pair of bedroom slippers you can real-
ize 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 I" says she, glancing
up under her lashes at him. "I—I was lonely!"


82 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"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


AND MR. MOODY INDIGESTION 83
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 up-
right 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 an-
gel! 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


84 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 bed-
room slippers to steam before the fire. "I'm going


AND MR. MOODY INDIGESTION 85
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 al-
ways theatrical. But what's the matter with a cap-
tive 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."


86 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"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."


AND MR. MOODY INDIGESTION 87
"What!" she screeched, and caught at the mantel-
piece to hold herself. "Not Pat!" she said, horri-
fied, "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 holi-
days, 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 em-
bezzlement 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 sud-


88 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
denly 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 sana-
torium." 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 sue-


AND MR. MOODY INDIGESTION 89
ceeds!" 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 an-
other 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


90 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
—Lord knows he'll be glad to go—and Miss Doro-
Ithy 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.


AND MR. MOODY INDIGESTION 91
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 slip-
pers again and we started through the snow across
the golf links, Mr. Dick carrying a bundle of fire-
wood, 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


92 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 '^oldy towel,
a can of sardines, a tooth-brush and a rubber car-
riage 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


AND MR. MOODY INDIGESTION 93
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 say-
ing 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


WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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
11 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 your-
self, 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 sit-
ting on the stairs. Mrs. Moody had been crying,


CHAPTER IX
DOLLY, HOW COULD YOU?
ILAY 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.
96


DOLLY, HOW COULD YOU? 97
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 sit-
ting-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


DOLLY, HOW COULD YOU? 99
"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 ex-
pect 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—"


ioo WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"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 Jen-
nings 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!"


DOLLY, HOW COULD YOU? 101
"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 / 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 an-
swered.
"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


io2 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 sana-
torium. 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 put-
ting 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


DOLLY, HOW COULD YOU? '103
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 sus-
picion, 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 cud-
dling together. It made me lonely to look at them.
I remember wishing I'd taught school, as I was edu-
cated 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 deter-
mined. 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


104 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 fright-
ened.
"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


DOLLY, HOW COULD YOU? 105
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


io6 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 Aus-
trian 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 any-
how, and that's just as bad. Dolly,"—she turned to
her sister imploringly—"Dolly, I can't have a scan-
dal 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 no-
toriety now the emperor will send him to Africa or
some place, and—"


DOLLY, HOW COULD YOU? 107
"I wish they would!" Mrs. Carter burst out sud-
denly. "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.


108 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"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


DOLLY, HOW COULD YOU? ioc)
that," broke in Mrs. Dick. "And after your wed-
ding 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 wait-
ing 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


no WHERE THERE'S A WILL
said; the family will make a tremendous row be-
forehand, 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—ex-
cept 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, al-
though 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


DOLLY, HOW COULD YOU? nr
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 en-
largement 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


ii2 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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, any-
how, and she wished she had died of ptomaine poi-
soning the time she ate the bad oyster 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.


DOLLY, HOW COULD YOU? 113
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,


n4 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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
I mistakes: we didn't count on Mr. Thoburn, and we
didn't know Mr. Pierce. And who could have imag-!
lined that Mike the bath man would do as he did?


CHAPTER X
ANOTHER COMPLICATION
FTER luncheon, when everybody at Hope
X X 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 learning.
Well, he looked dazed when I took him to the shel-
ter-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 
"5


n6 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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, in-
cluding 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.


ANOTHER COMPLICATION 117
"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.


n8 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
Everybody else was talking, and I was the only
one who saw him change color.
"Sweet peas," said Mr. Pierce. "And that re-
minds me—I'd like to make one condition, Mr. Car-
ter. I feel in a measure responsible for the com-
pany; most of them have gone back to New York,
but the leading woman is sick at the hotel in Finley-
ville. I'd like to bring her here for two weeks to re-
cuperate. 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."


ANOTHER COMPLICATION 119
"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 ac-
tress 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 re-
sponsible, 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."


120 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
Mr. Dick stalked to the window and looked out,
his hands in his pockets. I couldn't help being re-
minded 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 with-
out 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 bil-
liards and grumbled at the food and the manage-
ment, 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


ANOTHER COMPLICATION 121
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 I"
"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 gvup it a twist or two, Minnie, won't you?"


122 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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, for-
getting 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. Car-
ter 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


ANOTHER COMPLICATION 123
a few things. He's forever looking at the ther-
mometer and opening windows. I declare, if I
hadn't brought my woolen tights along I'd have
frozen to death at breakfast. Everybody's com-
plaining."
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 go-
ing 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, look-


124 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
ing 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 con-
jugations 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.


ANOTHER COMPLICATION 125
"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 coinci-
dence about the mumps!"
"Confounded kid had them," he said with bitter-
ness. "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
IDRAGGED 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, think-
ing what to do next, and as I sat there, the crayon
enlargement of father on the spring-house wall be-
gan 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.
126


128 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"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,


MISS PATTY'S PRINCE 129
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


130 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 pros-
pects! 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


MISS PATTY'S PRINCE 131
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 train-
ing 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


i32 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 pock-
ets 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 hur-
rying, 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


MISS PATTY'S PRINCE 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 ex-
claimed, 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, get-
ting 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


i34 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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


MISS PATTY'S PRINCE 135
his pockets and his hair ruffled as if he'd been run-
ning 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
1


136 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
Sam or Pierce to drop in, and I'll wear the con-
founded 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 nerv-
ously, "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?


"MISS PATTY'S PRINCE 137
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 dif-
ference, 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


138 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 ex-
plain 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 stub-
bornly. "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


MISS PATTY'S PRINCE 139
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
IHAD 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 dele-
gation 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.
140


WE GET A DOCTOR 141
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 ex-
plained. "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 morn-
ing, and liked to walk ten miles a day, and could di-
gest anything and go to sleep the minute his head


142 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 impos-
sible 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 puz-
zled 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 get-


WE GET A DOCTOR 143
ting 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, j
It won't be for long." J
Which left me thinking. I'd seen Thoburn talk-
ing to Mike more than once lately, and he'd been
going around with an air of assurance that didn't


WE GET A DOCTOR 145
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


i46 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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


WE GET A DOCTOR 147
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 to-
gether. 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 everyday about the basket she brought, and not to be held
much longer; and I had a man running the sanato-
rium 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.


148 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
Then I had a prince incognito, and Thoburn stir-
ring 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 peo-
ple 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 Al-
styne."
"Barnes!" I repeated. "Then you're the doctor."


WE GET A DOCTOR 149
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, wear-
ing 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-fight-
ing. Prize-fighting, the stage, and then writing for
magazines—that's the usual progression. Some-
times, as a sort of denouement before the final cur-
tain, we have dinner at the White House."
I took a liking to the man at once. It was a re-
lief 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


150 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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


WE GET A DOCTOR 15*
wasn't much: he was to tell them at what temper-
atures 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, trip-
ping out through the snow, with a tall thin man be-
side 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.
152


154 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"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 trou-
bles."
"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


THE PRINCE—PRINCIPALLY 155
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 combina-
tions. 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."


156 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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


THE PRINCE—PRINCIPALLY 157
sort of man is generally a social success and a mat-
rimonial 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 what-
ever 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, Min-
nie," he announced. "I suppose I can't do any-
thing 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 mis-
taken!)
Well, he sat there and looked at nothing while I
heated water in my brass kettle over the fire and


158 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 doc-
tor?"
"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


THE PRINCE—PRINCIPALLY 159
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.


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
161


PIERCE DISAPPROVES 163
"I wish you could see Blanche Moody!" she be-
gan 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 chamber-
maid 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 be'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 Jen-
nings, and have kissed her hand before everybody
at the foot of the stairs!"


164 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"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 beauti-
ful! 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 In-
wald before the day was over. All morning in the
spring-house they talked Mr. von Inwald. They pre-
tended 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


PIERCE DISAPPROVES 165
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 no-
ticed 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


166 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 play-
ing 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


PIERCE DISAPPROVES 167
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 star-
ing at the prince.
"What I don't quite understand, Mr. von In-
wald," 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 extrava-
gant. It is one result of their—of their spoiling."


168 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 al-
liances, 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


PIERCE DISAPPROVES 169
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 shel-
ter-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 Aus-
tria, 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
170


THE PRINCE, WITH APOLOGIES 171
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 de-
manded 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


172 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 at-
tack 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 play-
ing in the snow, and I killed him—not because I
wanted food or sport, Minnie, but—well, because I
had to kill something."


THE PRINCE, WITH APOLOGIES 173
"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 shoot-
ing 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 re-
member 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."


174 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"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, feel-
ing 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.


176 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"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!
IWAS 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 peo-
ple 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, Min-
nie," 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
177


ijS WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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


STOP, THIEF!
179
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 crotchet-
ing 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.


iSo WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"I'm sorry," she said. "I've been waiting hun-
grily 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 for-
got Miss Patty entirely.


STOP, THIEF! 181
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 al-
most 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.


182 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
Ipecac and colic both end with 'c'—I'll never for-
get 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, Mac-
Duff, 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-


STOP, THIEF!
183
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 ex-
presses 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


184 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 ex-
plained that just about the time they expected their


STOP, THIEF!
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."


186 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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.
i


188 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"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 pre-
sumptuous 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 per-
fectly 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


190 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"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 atone-
ment 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 tea-
spoon 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


A BUNCH OF LETTERS 191
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 lis-
tened, 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 skee-
ing with me this morning and not one of them ac-
cepted!"
"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." f


192 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"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 sana-
torium, 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 antag-
onize 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—>
-.


A BUNCH OF LETTERS 193
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


194 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
get to like it after a while," I said grimly. "Ordi-
nary air hasn't got any snap for me now."
"Humph I" 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 exer-
cise it will make you thin," I began. "'The process
is painless and certain: kindly nature in her benevo-
lent 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 Sum-


A BUNCH OF LETTERS 195
mers 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 after-
noon 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 be-
fore 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."


196 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"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— Sud-
denly 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."


A BUNCH OF LETTERS 197
She looked at us all closely, but she got nothing
from my face.
"Oh, very well," she said, shrugging her shoul-
ders, "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 an-
other.


CHAPTER XVIII
MISS cobb's burglar
IWENT 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
198


200 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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."


MISS COBB'S BURGLAR 20t
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 shoul-
der 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 mistake. I'm sleepy.
What time is it?"


202 WHERE THERE'S A .WILL
"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 growl-
ing 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—"Min-
nie, 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


MISS COBB'S BURGLAR 203
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 over-
threw me, and when I'd got my balance again I
looked into the room. Mr. Pierce was at the win-
dow, 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 min-
ute 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 insur-
ance 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


204 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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!"


2o5 WHERE THERE'S A WILI,
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 mar-
riage in Heaven."
"That's no argument for the other place," I an-
swered, and stopped, staring. He was pulling some-
thing 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 pack-
age 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


NO MARRIAGE IN HEAVEN 207
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 suddenly stooped and clutched frantically at
his leg.
"Want with those things!" he snarled. "I sup-
pose 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 in-
surance agent—"


NO MARRIAGE IN HEAVEN 209
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


2io WHERE THERE'S A WILL
—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, wait-


NO MARRIAGE IN HEAVEN 211
ing 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 di-
version 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.


2i2 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"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 re-
marked. "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 some-
thing 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 pro-
tectors 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 over-
coat with one hand, and trying to put the bottle in


NO MARRIAGE IN HEAVEN 213
one of the pockets with the other. Mrs. Sam didn't
look at her.
"Good morning, Mrs. Van Alstyne!" Miss Sum-
mers almost threw it at her. "I spoke to you be-
'fore; 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,


214. WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 under-
tone, "or I'll open the pantry door!"


NO MARRIAGE IN HEAVEN 215
"Open the door!" I retorted. I was half hys-
terical, 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 in-
decent, that's what it is. Didn't I get my clothes,
and weren't we to have been married by the Rever-
end 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 con-
tinued. "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


216 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 hap-
pens 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 advan-
tages!"
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


NO MARRIAGE IN HEAVEN 217
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 Sun-
day, 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. Jen-
nings came down in a wheeled chair, and Senator
Biggs, still looking a sort of grass-green and keep-
ing 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
218


EVERY DOG HAS HIS DAY 219
crocheters formed a crowd by themselves, exchang-
ing 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 ob-
jected. 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 wonder-
ful 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.


222 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 grow-
ing 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 Ara-
bella."
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. Ev-


EVERY DOG HAS HIS DAY
erybody jumped up and stared at the dog, and ev-
erybody 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 in-
clination to yawn all the time, and Mrs. Biggs' left
arm had gone to sleep. And then, with the excite-
ment 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 pos-
sibly Mr. Pierce had made a mistake in what he


EVERY DOG HAS HIS DAY 225
ward. "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 demoral-
ized. I stood by the spring and sipped at the water
to show I wasn't afraid of it, with my knees shak-
ing 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 anti-
dote.
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 for-
give 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!"


226 WHERE THERE'S A WILL'
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?"


EVERY DOG HAS HIS DAY 227
"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 un-
earthed 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 be-
side 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
228


THE MUTINY
229
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


THE MUTINY
231
"What do you think of that?" he asked, watching
me anxiously. "Looks pretty good?"
"Fine," I said, hating to disappoint him, al-
though I never eat sardines, and bananas give me
indigestion, "I'm hungry enough to eat a raw Ital-
ian."
"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 rea-
sons of state I"
"Where are they now?"
"My dear girl," he answered, putting down his


232 WHERE THERE'S A WILU
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, exud-
ing 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!"


THE MUTINY
233
"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 fu-
rious talking, and somebody shouting, "Mike!


234 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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, talk-
ing as no gentleman should talk under any circum-
stances, Senator Biggs. The rest followed, their red
faces shining through the steam—all of them mur-


THE MUTINY
235
derous, 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 slight-
est 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—"


236 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"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 them-
selves 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, pur-
ple-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


THE MUTINY
237
course, that they said they would all leave imme-
diately, 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 some-
thing 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 orna-
mental 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 unfor-
tunate accident—incident, if you prefer." He
looked at Thoburn, who was the only one in a bath-


238 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 de-
cided on a new order of things for this place any-
how. It's going to be a real health resort, run for


THE MUTINY
239
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 sur-
rounded 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 scan-
dalous 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


240 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 sug-
gested bringing him here, Minnie!"
And leaving me speechless with indignation, he
trailed himself and his sheet up the stairs.


CHAPTER XXII
HOME TO ROOST
ICOULDN'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.
241


HOME TO ROOST 243
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 Doc-
tor Barnes stopped, and leaning over the rail, took a
good look at me.
"When you self-contained women go to pieces,"


244 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 liv-
ery-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 doc-
tor helped me along, for the snow was drifting,


HOME TO ROOST 245
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 min-
eral 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 vio-
lent 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


246 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
the shelter-house it was in a wild state of excite-
ment. 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 roast-
ing 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 rib-
bon 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.


'248 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"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 re-
plied 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 them-
selves 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


HOME TO ROOST 249
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 morn-
ing, 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


250 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 peo-
ple, black against the white. They were not speak-
ing, 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."


HOME TO ROOST 251
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 stopped in front of him. "Prob-
ably you also knew that that was full, including the
stables, with people from the stalled trains," he as-
serted 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 un-


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 Dressier doing the Sa-
lome 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 rail-
road 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 pf 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 dis-
253


254 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
position 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 talk-
ing 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 col-
lided with Arabella and kicked her. Miss Patty
went white but Miss Summers was not a bit put


BACK TO NATURE
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


256 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 stom-
achs 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, touch-
ing 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 an-
swered. "If he kicked me, I'd bite him."
At eleven o'clock we had the clambake with beer,


BACK TO NATURE 257
in the kitchen, and Mr. von Inwald came, after all.
They were really very cheerful, all of them. Doc-
tor 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 main-
tained: 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.


258 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"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. No-
body will recognize me!"
Mr. Pierce got up again at the head of the long
kitchen table and said he merely meant rational liv-
ing—more air, more exercise, simpler food and bet-
ter 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


BACK TO NATURE 259
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 disagree-
ably.
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


26o WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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, look-
ing 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


262 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"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—"


BACK TO NATURE 263
"Not use the mineral spring I" I repeated, stupe-
fied.
"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 medi-
cine-closet in the bath-room and the department-
store patent-remedy counter is over? We've got
sanitarians 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.


264 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"Closed also. No medicine, Minnie. That's our
slogan. This is the day of prophylaxis. The doc-
tors 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 gen-
erally. 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
265


LIKE DUCKS TO WATER 267
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


270 WHERE THERE'S A .WILL
guess it was because Mr. Jennings still hadn't dont
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
itime?"
I "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, "some-


LIKE DUCKS TO WATER 271
body ought to warn that young man. Human na-
ture 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, Min-
nie, 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 ciga-
rette, 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


272 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
happen to have any corn-silk about, do you, Min-
nie?"
"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


274 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"It's a sweater," he said, not looking at me. "I
bought it for myself and it was too small— Con-
found 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 peo-
ple 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 hap-
pier 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



"I never bet,—" I retorted.





LIKE DUCKS TO WATER 275
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 pf 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


276 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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. No-
body 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


LIKE DUCKS TO WATER 277
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 pa-
per 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 Setter 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,


278 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 for-
got 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 re-
pair 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?"


LIKE DUCKS TO WATER 281
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 thin-
ner and the thin ones fatter, and Miss Julia Sum-
mers 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
282


THE FIRST FRUITS 283
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, be-
cause 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


284 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 Sum-
mers 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 hap-
pening that I'd clean forgotten Miss Cobb and her
woolen tights. And now to have them come back


THE FIRST FRUITS 285
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 my-
self—they're so beautiful. Letters from a life in-
surance 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 dis-
cussing me—"


286 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"As it happens," Miss Cobb said, glaring at her,
"I was discussing you."
"Fine!" said Miss Julia. "I love to talk about my-
self."
"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 hu-
mor, "don't you suppose I've got letters of my own,
without bothering with another woman's?"
"Perhaps," Miss Cobb replied in triumph, "per-
haps 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.


THE FIRST FRUITS 287
"Miss Cobb was robbed the other night," I ex-
plained, 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 indig-
nantly, "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!"


29o WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 an-
other 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


THE FIRST FRUITS
291
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 per-
fectly 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


2Q2 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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, every-
body having gone to bed—Miss Patty, the Van Al-
stynes 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


THE FIRST FRUITS 293
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 mar-
ried happiness upsets you, go away. Go away, any-
how."
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 warm-
ing her hands. I saw her sister watching her.
"What's wrong with you, Pat?" she asked. "Os-
kar 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."


294 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"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


THE FIRST FRUITS
said you women should not come so far. We could
have met in my sitting-room."
"You forget one thing," Mr. Dick put in dis-
agreeably, "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 let-
ters, "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 them-
selves 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 privi-
leges—breakfast when they wanted it, and Mr. Sam


296 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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.


OVER THE FENCE IS OUT 299
"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 Sum-
mers 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.


3o2 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"It appears so," Mr. Pierce said.
"She's rather magnanimous, under the circum-
stances," 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
man's voice, breathless and gasping.


OVER THE FENCE IS OUT 305
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, al-
most 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 nui-
sance, 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 )*t
bent over his half of the load.


3o6 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"'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 de-
clared. "You're too lowly minded."


OVER THE FENCE IS OUT 307
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, Min-
nie!"
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 Fin-
leyville 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.


A CUPBOARD FULL OF RYE 311
"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 in-
digestion, joy, forgetfulness and katzenjammer.
Oh, my suffering palate, to have to leave it all with-
out 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


312 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
life. My dear girl, our friend Thoburn is a rascal,
but he is also a student of mankind and a philoso-
pher. 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 na-
ture's a curious thing. It's human nature, for in-
stance, for me to be crazy about you, when you're
as hands-offish as a curly porcupine. And it is hu-
man 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 be-
hind 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


A CUPBOARD FULL OF RYE 313
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 ob-
jected. "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


3i4 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 say-
ing 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


3i6 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
up his face as he went out. It made him almost
good-looking. Oh, there's nothing like love, espev
dally 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."


A CUPBOARD FULL OF RYE 319
perate love to Miss Summers. Three of those let-
ters 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 yoUj
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.


320 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
But I wasn't so sure as I pretended to be. Mr.
von Inwald and Mr. Jennings had been closeted to-
gether 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, sit-
ting in front of the empty fireplace in the same chair
321


LOVE, LOVE, LOVE
"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 sud-
denly about two feet away, trying to think of some-
thing 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 wretch-


324 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
edness in her eyes, if he had only seen. "I am very
happy."
"She was just saying," I said bitterly, "how grate-
ful 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 un-
happy. But isn't that what I was to do—to make
them well if I could?"
"How could anybody know—" she began an-
grily, 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.


332 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 door-
way. "Exactly—I can wade through the snow,
bringing you meals that you scorn—oh, yes, you


A BIG NIGHT TO-NIGHT 333
scorn them. What did you do to the basket to-
night? Look at it, lying there, neglected in a cor-
ner, 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 heav-
en'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-rrbr-


334 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
row. 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 say-
ing over and over to myself, so I'd not forget, "to-
night, 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 remem-
ber.
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 some-
x>dy 'beating on tin.
"Can't do it." It was the bishop's voice. "I am convinced that nothing but dynamite will open this
tn of lobster."


336 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"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 whaf
| 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. Noth-
ing 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."


338 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
sort of scratching on the door behind Miss Sum-
mers' 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 pre-
tended 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


A BIG NIGHT TO-NIGHT 339
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 even-
ing, 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.


340 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"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 an-
grily. "Father, Bishop, will you stand for this?
Why, he may jump out the window and hurt him-
self! 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 un-
der 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, i
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


342 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
"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 cauli-
flower 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, flour-
ishing 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 BIG NIGHT TO-NIGHT 343
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."
*
344


LET GOOD DIGESTION 345
"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 after-
noon."
"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 star-
ing 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


346 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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


348 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
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 mis-
taken. 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."
1 "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








350 WHERE THERE'S A WILL
Jennings said ability of his kind was wasted there,
once the place was running, and set him to build-
ing 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 run-
ning 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. Jen-
nings 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


LET GOOD DIGESTION • 351
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,


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