ll 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
believe 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."

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 the
spring-house on it, and me handing the old doctor a glass of mineral
water, and wearing the embroidered 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.