Where There's a Will Part 36

"Shame on all of you!" I said. "He's done what he promised he'd do, and more. If he did what he ought, he'd leave this minute, and let you find out for yourself what it is to drive thirty-odd different stomachs and the same number of bad dispositions in one direction."

"You are perfectly right, Minnie," Miss Patty said. "We're beastly, all of us, and I'm sorry." She went over and held out her hand to him.

"You've done the impossible," she told him. He beamed.

"Your approval means more than anything," he said, holding her hand.

Mrs. d.i.c.k sat up and opened her eyes wide.

"Speaking of Oskar," she began, and then stopped, staring past her sister, toward the door.

We all turned, and there, blinking in the light, was Miss Summers.

CHAPTER XXVI

OVER THE FENCE IS OUT

"WELL!" she said, and stood staring. Then she smiled--I guess our faces were funny.

"May I come in?" she asked, and without waiting she came in and closed the door. "You DO look cozy!" she said, and shook herself free of snow.

Mr. d.i.c.k had turned white. He got up with his eyes on her, and twice he opened his mouth and couldn't speak. He backed, still watching her, to his wife, and stood in front of her, as if to protect her.

Mr. Sam got his voice first.

"B--bad night for a walk," he said.

"Frightful!" she said. "I've been buried to my knees. May I sit down?"

To those of us who knew, her easy manner had something horrible in it.

"Sorry there are no chairs, Julia," Mr. Pierce said. "Sit on the cot, won't you?"

"Who IS it?" Mrs. d.i.c.k asked from, as you may say, her eclipse. She and Miss Summers were the only calm ones in the room.

"I--I don't know," Mr. d.i.c.k stammered, but the next moment Miss Julia, from the cot, looked across at him and grinned.

"Well, d.i.c.ky!" she said. "Who'd have thought it!"

"You said you didn't know her!" his wife said from behind him.

"Who'd have thought wha--what?" he asked with bravado.

"All this!" Miss Julia waved her hand around the room, with its bare walls, and blankets over the windows to keep the light in and the cold out, and the circle of us sitting around on sand boxes from the links and lawn rollers. "To find you here, all snug in your own home, with your household G.o.ds and a wife." n.o.body could think of anything to say.

"That is," she went on, "I believe there is a wife. Good heavens, d.i.c.ky, it isn't Minnie?"

He stepped aside at that, disclosing Mrs. d.i.c.k on her box, with her childish eyes wide open.

"There--there IS a wife, Julia," he said. "This is her--she."

Well, she'd come out to make mischief--it was written all over her when she came in the door, but when Mr. d.i.c.k presented his wife, frightened as he was and still proud of her, and Mrs. d.i.c.k smiled in her pretty way, Miss Summers just walked across and looked down at her with a queer look on her face. I shut my eyes and waited for the crash, but nothing came, and when I opened them again there were the two women holding hands and Miss Summers smiling a sort of crooked grin at Mr. d.i.c.k.

"I ought to be very angry with your husband," she said. "I--well, I never expected him to marry without my being among those present. But since he has done it--! d.i.c.k, you wretched boy, you took advantage of my being laid up with the mumps!"

"Mumps!" Mrs. d.i.c.k said. "Why, he has just had them himself!" She looked around the circle suspiciously, and every one of us looked as guilty as if he had been caught with the mumps concealed around him somewhere.

"I didn't have real mumps," Mr. d.i.c.k explained. "It was only--er--a swelling."

"You SAID it was mumps, and even now you hate pickles!"

Mr. Pierce had edged over to Miss Summers and patted her shoulder.

"Be a good sport, Julia," he whispered.

She threw off his hand.

"I'm being an idiot!" she said angrily. "d.i.c.k's an a.s.s, and he's treated me like a villain, but look at that baby! It will be twenty years before she has to worry about her weight."

"I never cared for pickles," Mr. d.i.c.k was saying with dignity. "The doctor said--"

"I think we'd better be going." Miss Patty got up and gathered up her cloak. But if she meant to break up the party Miss Summers was not ready.

"If you don't mind," she said, "I'll stay. I'm frozen, and I've got to go home and sleep with my window up. You're lucky," she went on to the d.i.c.kys. "I dare say the air in here would scare us under a microscope, but at least it is warm."

The Van Alstynes made a move to go, but Mr. d.i.c.ky frantically gestured to them not to leave him alone, and Mrs. Sam sat down again sulkily. Mr.

Pierce picked up his cap.

"I'll take you back," he said to Miss Patty, and his face was fairly glowing. But Miss Patty slipped her arm through mine.

"Come, Minnie, Mr. Pierce is going to take us," she said.

"I'd--I'd rather go alone," I said.

"Nonsense."

"I'm not ready. I've got to gather up these dishes," I objected.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see the glow dying out of Mr.

Pierce's face. But Miss Patty took my arm and led me to the door.

"Let them gather up their own dishes," she said. "Dolly, you ought to be ashamed to let Minnie slave for you the way she does. Good night, everybody."

I did my best to leave them alone on the way back, but Miss Patty stuck close to my heels. It was snowing, and the going was slow.

For the first five minutes she only spoke once.

"And so Miss Summers and d.i.c.ky Carter are old friends!"