rd, 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
he bent over his half of the load.

"'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 declared. "You're too lowly
minded."

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, Minnie!"

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
Finleyville 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.

I lay and stared back.

"And another thing," she said. "I never had any real intention of
marrying Dicky Carter and raising a baby sanatorium. I wouldn't have the
face to ask Arabella to li