Where There's a Will Part 18

I had hardly closed the door after them when it opened again and Mr.

Pierce came in. He shut the door and, going over to one of the tables, put a package down on it.

"Here's the stuff you wanted for the spring, Minnie," he announced. "I suppose I can't do anything more than register a protest against it?"

"You needn't bother doing that," I answered, "unless it makes you feel better. Your authority ends at that door. Inside the spring-house I'm in control."

(It's hard to believe, with things as they are, that I once really believed that. But I did. It was three full days later that I learned that I'd been mistaken!)

Well, he sat there and looked at nothing while I heated water in my bra.s.s kettle over the fire and dissolved the things against Thoburn's quick eye the next day, and he didn't say anything. He had a gift for keeping quiet, Mr. Pierce had. It got on my nerves after a while.

"Things are doing better," I remarked, stirring up my mixture.

"Yes," he said, without moving.

"I suppose they're happier now they have a doctor?"

"Yes--no--I don't know. He's not much of a doctor, you know--and there don't seem to be any medical books around."

"There's one on the care and feeding of infants in the circulating library," I said, "and he can have my Anatomy."

"You're generous!" he remarked, with one of his quick smiles.

"It's a book," I snapped, and fell to stirring again. But he was moping once more, with his feet out and his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling.

"I say, Minnie--"

"Yes?"

"Miss--Miss Jennings and the von Inwald were here just now, weren't they? I pa.s.sed them on the bridge."

"Yes."

"What--how do you like him?"

"Better than I expected and not so well as I might," I said. "If you are going to the house soon you might take Miss Patty her handkerchief. It's there under that table."

I took my mixture into the pantry and left it to cool. But as I started back I stopped. He had got the handkerchief and was standing in front of the fire, holding it in the palm of his hand and looking at it. And all in a minute he crushed it to his face with both hands and against the firelight I could see him quivering.

I stepped back into the pantry and came out again noisily. He was standing very calm and quiet where he had been before, and no handkerchief in sight.

"Well," I said, "did you get it?"

"Get what?"

"Miss Patty's handkerchief?"

"Oh--that! Yes. Here it is." He pulled it out of his pocket and held it up by the corner.

"Ridiculous size, isn't it, and--" he held it up to his nose--"I dare say one could almost tell it was hers by the scent. It's--it's like her."

"Humph!" I said, suddenly suspicious, and looked at it. "Well," I said, "it may remind you of Miss Patty, and the scent may be like Miss Patty, but she doesn't use perfume on her handkerchief. This has an E. C. on it, which means Eliza Cobb."

He left soon after, rather crestfallen, but to save my life I couldn't forget what I'd seen--him with that sc.r.a.p of linen that he thought was hers crushed to his face, and his shoulders heaving. I had an idea that he hadn't cared much for women before, and that, this being a first attack, he hadn't established what the old doctor used to call an immunity.

CHAPTER XIV

PIERCE DISAPPROVES

Mrs. Hutchins came out to the spring-house the next morning. She was dressed in a black silk with real lace collar and cuffs, and she was so puffed up with pride that she forgot to be nasty to me.

"I thought I'd better come to you, Minnie," she said. "There seems to be n.o.body in authority here any more. Mr. Carter has put the--has put Mr.

von Inwald in the north wing. I can not imagine why he should have given him the coldest and most disagreeable part of the house."

I said I'd speak to Mr. Carter and try to have him moved, and she rustled over to where I was brus.h.i.+ng the hearth and stooped down.

"Mr. von Inwald is incognito, of course," she said, "but he belongs to a very old family in his own country--a n.o.ble family. He ought to have the best there is in the house."

I promised that, too, and she went away, but I made up my mind to talk to Mr. Pierce. The sanatorium business isn't one where you can put your own likes and dislikes against the comfort of the guests.

Miss Cobb came out a few minutes after; she had on her new green silk with the white lace tr.i.m.m.i.n.g. She saw me staring as she threw off her cape and put her curler on the log.

"It's a little dressy for so early, of course, Minnie," she said, "but I wish you'd see some of the other women! Breakfast looked like an afternoon reception. What would you think of pinning this black velvet ribbon around my head?"

"It might have done twenty years ago, Miss Cobb," I answered, "but I wouldn't advise it now." I was working at the slot-machine, and I heard her sniff behind me as she hung up her mirror on the window-frame.

She tried the curler on the curtain, which she knows I object to, but she was too full of her subject to be sulky for long.

"I wish you could see Blanche Moody!" she began again, standing holding the curler, with a thin wreath of smoke making a halo over her head.

"Drawn in--my dear, I don't see how she can breathe! I guess there's no doubt about Mr. von Inwald."

"I'd like to know who put this beer check in the slot-machine yesterday," I said as indifferently as I could. "What about Mr. von Inwald?"

She tiptoed over to me, the halo trailing after her.

"About his being a messenger from the prince to Miss Jennings!" she answered in a whisper. "He spent last night closeted with papa, and the chambermaid on that floor told Lily Biggs that there was almost a quarrel."

"That doesn't mean anything," I objected. "If the Angel Gabriel was shut in with Mr. Jennings for ten minutes he'd be blowing his trumpet for help."

Miss Cobb shrugged her shoulders and took hold of a fresh wisp of hair with the curler.

"I dare say," she a.s.sented, "but the Angel Gabriel wouldn't have waited to breakfast with Miss Jennings, and have kissed her hand before everybody at the foot of the stairs!"

"Is he handsome?" I asked, curious to know how he would impress other women. But Miss Cobb had never seen a man she would call ugly.