“Here’s to everything turning out better than we expect!” she said, and made a face as she drank the water.  I thought that she was thinking of her own troubles as well as mine, for she put down the glass and stood looking at her engagement ring, a square red ruby in an old-fashioned setting.  It was a very large ruby, but I’ve seen showier rings.

“There isn’t anything wrong, Miss Patty, is there?” I asked, and she dropped her hand and looked at me.

“Oh, no,” she said.  “That is, nothing much, Minnie.  Father is—­I think he’s rather ridiculous about some things, but I dare say he’ll come around.  I don’t mind his fussing with me, but—­if it should get in the papers, Minnie!  A breath of unpleasant notoriety now would be fatal!”

“I don’t see why,” I said sharply.  “The royal families of Europe have a good bit of unpleasant notoriety themselves occasionally.  I should think they’d fall over themselves to get some good red American blood.  Blue blood’s bad blood; you can ask any doctor.”

But she only smiled.

“You’re like father, Minnie,” she said.  “You’ll never understand.”

“I’m not sure I want to,” I snapped, and fell to polishing glasses.

The storm stopped a little at three and most of the guests waded down through the snow for bridge and spring water.  By that time the afternoon train was in, and no Mr. Dick.  Mr. Sam was keeping the lawyer, Mr. Stitt, in the billiard room, and by four o’clock they’d had everything that was in the bar and were inventing new combinations of their own.  And Mrs. Sam had gone to bed with a nervous headache.

Senator Biggs brought the mail down to the spring-house at four, but there was nothing for me except a note from Mr. Sam, rather shaky, which said he’d no word yet and that Mr. Stitt had mixed all the cordials in the bar in a beer glass and had had to go to bed.

At half past four Mr. Thoburn came out for a minute.  He said there was only one other train from town that night and the chances were it would be snowed up at the junction.

“Better get on the band wagon before the parade’s gone past,” he said in an undertone.  But I went into my pantry and shut the door with a slam, and when I came out he was gone.

I nearly went crazy that afternoon.  I put salt in Miss Cobb’s glass when she always drank the water plain.  Once I put the broom in the fire and started to sweep the porch with a fire log Luckily they were busy with their letters and it went unnoticed, the smell of burning straw not rising, so to speak, above the sulphur in the spring.

Senator Biggs went from one table to another telling how well he felt since he stopped eating, and trying to coax the other men to starve with him.

It’s funny how a man with a theory about his stomach isn’t happy until he has made some other fellow swallow it.

“Well,” he said, standing in front of the fire with a glass of water in his hand, “it’s worth while to feel like this.  My head’s as clear as a bell.  I don’t care to eat; I don’t want to eat.  The ‘fast’ is the solution.”