“I wish they would!” Mrs. Carter burst out suddenly.  “I hate the whole thing.  They only tolerate you—­us—­for our money.  You needn’t look at me like that; Oskar may be all right, but his mother and sisters are hateful—­simply hateful!”

“I’ll not be with them.”

“No, but they’ll be with you.”  Mrs. Dicky walked over to the window and looked out, dabbing her eyes.  “You’ve been everything to me, Pat, and I’m so happy now—­I’d rather be here on a soap box with Dick than on a throne or a dais or whatever you’ll have to sit on over there, with Oskar.  I want to be happy—­and you won’t.  Look at Alice Thorne and her duke!”

“If you really want me to be happy,” Miss Patty said, going over to her, “you’ll go back to school until the wedding is over.”

“I won’t leave Dicky.”  She swung around and gave Mr. Dick an adoring glance, and Miss Patty looked discouraged.

“Take him with you,” she said.  “Isn’t there some place near where he could stay, and telephone you now and then?”

“Telephone!” said Mrs. Dick scornfully.

“Can’t leave,” Mr. Dick objected.  “Got to be on the property.”

Miss Patty shrugged her shoulders and turned to go.  “You’re both perfectly hopeless,” she said.  “I’ll go and tell father, Dorothy, but you know what will happen.  You’ll be back in school at Greenwich by to-night, and your—­husband will probably be under arrest.”  She opened the door, but I dropped the toast I was making and ran after her.

“If he is arrested,” I said, “they’ll have to keep him on the place.  He can’t leave.”

She didn’t say anything; she lifted her hand and looked at the ruby ring, and then she glanced back into the room where Mr. Dick and his wife were whispering together, and turned up her coat collar.

“I’m going,” she said, and stepped into the snow.  But they called her back in a hurry.

“Look here, Miss—­Miss Patricia,” Mr. Dick said, “why can’t we stay here, where we are?  It’s very comfortable—­that is, it’s livable.  There’s plenty of fresh air, anyhow, and everybody’s shouting for fresh air nowadays.  They’ve got somebody to take my place in the house.”

“And father needn’t know a thing—­you can fix that,” broke in Mrs. Dick.  “And after your wedding he will be in a better humor; he’ll know it’s over and not up to him any more.”

Miss Patty came back to the shelter-house again and sat down on the soap box.

“We might carry it off,” she said.  “If I could only go back to town!  But father is in one of his tantrums, and he won’t go, or let me go.  The idea!—­with Aunt Honoria on the long-distance wire every day, having hysterics, and my clothes waiting to be tried on and everything.  I’m desperate.”

“And all sorts of things being arranged for you!” put in Mrs. Dick enviously.  “And the family jewels being reset in Vienna for you and all that!  It would be great—­if you only didn’t have to take Oskar with the jewels!”