“Two stages to that solution, Senator,” said the bishop; “first, resolution; last, dissolution.”

Then they all began at once.  If you have ever heard twenty people airing their theories on diet you know all about it.  One shouts for Horace Fletcher, and another one swears by the scraped-beef treatment, and somebody else never touches a thing but raw eggs and milk, and pretty soon there is a riot of calories and carbohydrates.  It always ends the same way:  the man with the loudest voice wins, and the defeated ones limp over to the spring and tell their theories to me.  They know I’m being paid to listen.

On this particular afternoon the bishop stopped the riot by rising and holding up his hand.  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “let us not be rancorous.  If each of us has a theory, and that theory works out to his satisfaction, then—­why are we all here?”

“Merely to tell one another the good news!” Mr. Jennings said sourly from his corner.

Honest, it was funny.  If some folks were healthy they’d be lonesome.

But when things had got quiet—­except Mr. Moody dropping nickels into the slot-machine—­I happened to look over at Miss Patty, and I saw there was something wrong.  She had a letter open in her lap not one of the blue ones with the black and gold seal that every one in the house knew came from the prince but a white one, and she was staring at it as if she’d seen a ghost.

CHAPTER V

WANTED—­AN OWNER

I have never reproached Miss Patty, but if she had only given me the letter to read or had told me the whole truth instead of a part of it, I would have understood, and things would all have been different.  It is all very well for her to say that I looked worried enough already, and that anyhow it was a family affair.  I should have been told.

All she did was to come up to me as I stood in the spring, with her face perfectly white, and ask me if my Dicky Carter was the Richard Carter who stayed at the Grosvenor in town.

“He doesn’t stay anywhere,” I said, with my feet getting cold, “but that’s where he has apartments.  What has he been doing now?”

“You’re expecting him on the evening train, aren’t you?” she asked.  “Don’t stare like that:  my father’s watching.”

“He ought to be on the evening train,” I said.  I wasn’t going to say I expected him.  I didn’t.

“Listen, Minnie,” she said, “you’ll have to send him away again the moment he comes.  He must not go into the house.”

I stood looking at her, with my mouth open.

“Not go into the house,” I repeated, “with everybody waiting for him for the last six days, and Mr. Stitt here to turn things over to him!”

She stood tapping her foot, with her pretty brows knitted.

“The wretch!” she cried, “the hateful creature as if things weren’t bad enough!  I suppose he’ll have to come, Minnie, but I must see him before he sees any one else.”