She stopped unfastening her long braids of hair.

“Certainly I’ll go to the shelter-house,” she said, “and I’ll shake a little sense into Dorothy Jennings—­the abominable little idiot!  But they needn’t think I’m going to help them with father; I wouldn’t if I could, and I can’t.  He won’t speak to me.  I’m in disgrace, Minnie.”  She gave her hair a shake, twisted it into a rope and then a knot, and stuck a pin in it.  It was lovely:  I wish Miss Cobb could have seen her.  “You’ve known father for years, Minnie:  have you ever known him to be so—­so—­”

“Devilish” was the word she meant, but I finished for her.

“Unreasonable?” I said.  “Well, once before when you were a little girl, he put his cane through a window in the spring-house, because he thought it needed air.  The spring-house, of course, not the cane.”

“Exactly,” she said, looking around the room, “and now he’s putting a cane through every plan I have made.  Do you see my heavy boots?”

“It’s like this,” I remarked, bringing the boots from outside the door, “if he’s swallowed the prince and is choking on the settlement question he might as well get over it.  All those foreigners expect pay for taking a wife.  Didn’t the chef here want to marry Tillie, the diet cook, and didn’t he want her to turn over the three hundred dollars she had in the bank, and her real estate, which was a sixth interest in a cemetery lot?  But Tillie stuck it out and he wouldn’t take her without.”

“It isn’t quite the same, Minnie,” she said, sitting down on the floor to put on her stockings.

“The principle’s the same,” I retorted, “and if you ask me—­”

“I haven’t,” she said disagreeably, “and when you begin to argue, Minnie, you make my head ache.”

“I have had a heartache for a week,” I snapped, “let alone heartburn, and I’ll be glad when the Jennings family is safely married and I can sleep at night.”

I was hurt.  I went out and shut the door behind me, but I stopped in the hall and went back.

“I forgot to say,” I began, and stopped.  She was still sitting on the floor, trying to put her heavy boots on, and crying all over them.

“Stop that instantly,” I said, and jerked her shoes from her.  “Get into a chair and let me put them on.  And if you will wait a jiffy I’ll bring you a cup of coffee.  I’m not even a Christian in the morning until I’ve had my coffee.”

“You haven’t had it yet, have you?” she asked, and we laughed together, rather shaky.  But as I buttoned her shoes I saw her eyes going toward the blue letters on the bed.

“Oh, Minnie,” she said, “if you only knew how peculiar they are in Europe!  They’ll never allow a sanatorium in the family!”

“I guess a good many would be the better for having one close,” I said.

Well, I left her to get dressed and went to the kitchens.  Tillie was there getting the beef tea ready for the day, but none of the rest was around.  They knew the housekeeper was gone, but I guess they’d forgotten that I was still on hand.  I put a kettle against the electric bell that rings in the chef’s room so it would keep on ringing and went on into the diet kitchen.