CHAPTER II
MISS PATTY ARRIVES
It was pretty quiet in the spring-house that day after the old doctorleft. It had started to snow and only the regulars came out. What withthe old doctor talking about dying, and Miss Patty Jennings gone toMexico, when I'd been looking forward to her and her cantankerous oldfather coming to Hope Springs for February, as they mostly did, I wasdepressed all day. I got to the point where Mr. Moody feeding nickelsinto the slot-machine with one hand and eating zwieback with the othermade me nervous. After a while he went to sleep over it, and when hehad slipped a nickel in his mouth and tried to put the zwieback in themachine 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 wonderedwhat I would do if the old doctor died, and what a fool I'd been not tobe a school-teacher, which is what I studied for.
I was thinking to myself bitterly that all that my experience in thespring fitted me for was to be a mermaid, when I heard something runningdown the path, and it turned out to be Tillie, the diet cook.
She slammed the door behind her and threw the Finleyville evening paperat 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; theemperor HAD! I sat down and read it through, and there was Miss Patty'spicture in an oval and the prince's in another, with a turned-upmustache and his hand on the handle of his sword, and between them bothwas the Austrian emperor. Tillie came and looked over my shoulder.
"I'm not keen on the mustache," she said, "but the sword'sbeautiful--and, oh, Minnie, isn't he aristocratic? Look at his nose!"
But I'm not one to make up my mind in a hurry, and I'd heard enough talkabout foreign marriages in the years I'd been dipping out mineral waterto make me a skeptic, so to speak.
"I'm not so sure," I said slowly. "You can't tell anything by that kindof a picture. If he was even standing beside a chair I could get a lineon him. He may be only four feet high."
"Then Miss Jennings wouldn't love him," declared Tillie. "How do youreckon 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 heartaround them and an overweight cupid above to make a love-match. Love's aword 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'sbeautiful, and you're as excited as I am, Minnie Waters, and if you'renot, what have you got the drinking glass she used last winter put onthe top shelf out of reach for?" She went to the door and slammed itopen. "Thank heaven I'm not a dried-up old maid," she called back overher shoulder, "and when you're through hugging that paper you can sendit 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 everywinter for years. Many a time she'd slipped away from her governess andcome down to the spring-house for a chat with me, and we'd make pop-corntogether by my open fire, and talk about love and clothes, and even thetariff, Miss Patty being for protection, which was natural, seeing thatwas the way her father made his money, and I for free trade, especiallyin the winter when my tips fall off considerable.
And when she was younger she would sit back from the fire, with thecorn-popper on her lap and her cheeks as red as cranberries, and say: "IDON'T know why I tell you all these things, Minnie, but Aunt Honoria'sfunny, and I can't talk to Dorothy; she's too young, you know. Well, HEsaid--" only every winter it was a different "he."
In my wash-stand drawer I'd kept all the clippings about her coming outand the winter she spent in Washington and was supposed to be engaged tothe president's son, and the magazine article that told how Mr. Jenningshad got his money by robbing widows and orphans, and showed the littleframe house where Miss Patty was born--as if she's had anything to dowith it. And so now I was cutting out the picture of her and the princeand the article underneath which told how many castles she'd have, and Idon't mind saying I was sniffling a little bit, for I couldn't get usedto the idea. And suddenly the door closed softly and there was a rustlebehind me. When I turned it was Miss Patty herself. She saw the clippingimmediately, and stopped just inside the door.
"YOU, TOO," she said. "And we've come all this distance to get away fromjust that."
"Well, I shan't talk about it," I replied, not holding out my hand, forwith her, so to speak, next door to being a princess--but she leanedright over and kissed me. I could hardly believe it.
"Why won't you talk about it?" she insisted, catching me by theshoulders and holding me off. "Minnie, your eyes are as red as yourhair!"
"I don't approve of it," I said. "You might as well know it now aslater, Miss Patty. I don't believe in mixed marriages. I had a cousinthat married a Jew, and what with him making the children promise to begood on the Talmud and her trying to raise them with the Bible, the poorthings is that mixed up that it's pitiful."
She got a little red at that, but she sat down and took up the clipping.
"He's much better looking than that, Minnie," she said soberly, "andhe's a good Catholic. But if that's the way you feel we'll not talkabout 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 Americathe summer before.
"Certainly he's crazy about it--almost insane!" she said, and smiled atme in her old way over the top of the glass. Then she put down the glassand came over to me. "Minnie, Minnie," she said, "if you only knew howI've wanted to get away from the newspapers and the gossips and come tothis 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 tolive in a country where they harness women with dogs, and you'll neverhear an English word from morning to night."
"Stuff!" She gave me a little shake. "He speaks as good English as Ido. And now we're going to stop talking about him--you're worse than thenewspapers." She took off her things and going into my closet began torummage for the pop-corn. "Oh, how glad I am to get away," she sangout to me. "We're supposed to have gone to Mexico; even Dorothy doesn'tknow. Where's the pop-corner or the corn-popper or whatever you callit?"
She was as happy to have escaped the reporters and the people she knewas a child, and she sat down on the floor in front of the fire and beganto shell the corn into the popper, as if she'd done it only the daybefore.
"I guess you're safe enough here," I said. "It's always slack inJanuary--only a few chronics and the Saturday-to-Monday husbands, excepta drummer now and then who drives up from Finleyville. It's too earlyfor drooping society buds, and the chronic livers don't get around untillate 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 Mikestaggered in.
"The old doctor!" he gasped. "He's dead, Miss Minnie--died just now inthe hot room in the bathhouse! One minute he was givin' me the divil forsomething or other, and the next--I thought he was asleep."
Something that had been heavy in my breast all afternoon suddenly seemedto 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 diedin his bed, and you know it. If it gets out that he died in the hot roomI'll have the coroner on you."
Miss Patty was standing by the railing of the spring. I got my shawl andstarted out after Mike, and she followed.
"If the guests ever get hold of this they'll stampede. Start anye
xcitement in a sanatorium," I said, "and one and all they'll dip theirthermometers in hot water and swear they've got fever!"
And we hurried to the house together.
Where There's a Will Page 2