Pat?"

"Certainly," Miss Patty said indignantly. "Don't be silly, Dolly."

At that instant Mr. Dick found the beans, and got up shouting that we'd
have a meal fit for a prince--if princes ate anything so every day as
baked beans. I put the eggs on a platter and poured the coffee, and we
all sat around the soap box and ate. I wished that Miss Cobb could have
seen me there--how they insisted on my having a second egg, and was my
coffee cold, and wasn't I too close to the fire? It was Minnie here and
Minnie there, and me next to Miss Patty on the floor, and she, as you
may say, right next to royalty. I wished it could have been in the
spring-house, with father's crayon enlargement looking down on us.

Everybody felt better for the meal, and we were sitting there laughing
and talking and very cheerful when Mr. Van Alstyne opened the door and
looked in. His face was stern, but when he saw us, with Miss Patty on
her knees toasting a piece of bread and Mr. Dicky passing the tin basin
as a finger-bowl, he stopped scowling and looked amused.

"They're here, Sallie," he called to his wife, and they both came in,
covered with snow, and we had coffee and eggs all over again.

Well, they stayed for an hour, and Mr. Sam talked himself black in the
face and couldn't get anywhere. For the Dickys refused to be separated,
and Mrs. Dick wouldn't tell her father, and Miss Patty wouldn't do it
for her, and the minute Mr. Sam made a suggestion that sounded rational
Mrs. Dick would cry and say she didn't care to live, anyhow, and she
wished she had died of ptomaine poisoning the time she ate the bad
oysters at school.

So finally Mr. Sam gave up and said he washed his hands of the whole
affair, and that he was going to make another start on his wedding
journey, and if they wanted to be a pair of fools it wasn't up to
him--only for heaven's sake not to cry about it. And then he wiped
Mrs. Dicky's eyes and kissed her, she being, as he explained, his
sister-in-law now and much too pretty for him to scold.

And when the Dickys found they were not going to be separated we had
more coffee all around and everybody grew more cheerful.

Oh, we were very cheerful! I look back now and think how cheerful we
were, and I shudder. It was strange that we hadn't been warned by Mr.
Pierce's square jaw, but we were not. We sat around the fire and ate and
laughed, and Mr. Dick arranged that Mr. Pierce should come out to him
every evening for orders abou