“’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 live here.”

“I’m glad you feel that way, Miss Summers,” I said.  “I’ve gone through a lot; I’m an old woman in the last two weeks.  My hair’s falling from its having to stand up on end half the time.”

She leaned over and put her cigarette on the back of my celluloid mirror, and then suddenly she threw back her head and laughed.

“Minnie!” she said, between fits, “Minnie!  As long as I live I’ll never forget that wretched boy’s face!  And the sand boxes!  And the blankets over the windows!  And the tarpaulin over the rafters!  And Mr. Van Alstyne sitting on the lawnmower!  I’d rather have had my minute in that doorway than fifty thousand dollars!”