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 embezzlement 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 suddenly 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
sanatorium." 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 succeeds!" 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 another 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 un