I went over to the fire and emptied my bedroom slippers of snow.  Then I sat down and looked at them both.

“Frozen!” repeated I; “I’m in a hot sweat.  If you two children meant to come, why in creation didn’t you come in time?”

“We did,” replied Mr. Dick, promptly.  “We crawled under the wire fence into the deer park at five minutes to twelve.  The will said ’Be on the ground,’ and I was—­flat on the ground!”

“We’ve had the police,” I said, drearily enough.  “I wouldn’t live through another day like yesterday for a hundred dollars.”

“We were held up by the snow,” he explained.  “We got a sleigh to come over in, but we walked up the hill and came here.  I don’t mind saying that my wife’s people don’t know about this yet, and we’re going to lay low until we’ve cooked up some sort of a scheme to tell them.”  Then he came over and put his hand on my shoulder.

“Poor old Minnie!” he said; “honest, I’m sorry.  I’ve been a hard child to raise, haven’t I?  But that’s all over, Minnie.  I’ve got an incentive now, and it’s ‘steady, old boy,’ for me from now.  You and I will run the place and run it right.”

“I don’t want to!” I retorted, holding my bedroom slippers to steam before the fire.  “I’m going to buy out Timmon’s candy store and live a quiet life, Mr. Dick.  This place is making me old.”

“Nonsense!  We’re going to work together, and we’ll make this the busiest spot in seven counties.  Dorothy and I have got it all planned out and we’ve got some corking good ideas.”  He put his hands in his pockets and strutted up and down.  “It’s the day of advertising, you know, Minnie,” he said.  “You’ve got to have the goods, and then you’ve got to let people know you’ve got the goods.  What would you say to a shooting-gallery in the basement, under the reading-room?”

“Fine!” I said, with sarcasm, turning my slippers.  “If things got too quiet that would wake them up a bit, and we could have a balloon ascension on Saturdays!”

“Not an ascension,” said he, with my bitterness going right over his head.  “Nothing sensational, Minnie.  That’s the way with women; they’re always theatrical.  But what’s the matter with a captive balloon, and letting fresh-air cranks sleep in a big basket bed—­say, at five hundred feet?  Or a thousand—­a thousand would be better.  The air’s purer.”

“With a net below,” says I, “in case they should turn over and fall out of bed!  It’s funny nobody ever thought of it before!”

“Isn’t it?” exclaimed Mrs. Dick.  “And we’ve all sorts of ideas.  Dick—­Mr. Carter has learned of a brand new cocktail for the men—­”

“A lulu!” he broke in.

“And I’m going around to read to the old ladies and hold their hands—­”

“You’ll have to chloroform them first,” I put in.  “Perhaps it would be better to give the women the cocktail and hold the men’s hands.”