Mr. Pierce also glanced at Miss Patty.  He’d been glancing at her at intervals of two seconds ever since she came in, and being a woman and having a point to gain, Miss Patty seemed to have forgotten the night before, and was very nice to him.  Once she smiled directly at him, and whatever he was saying died in his throat of the shock.  When she turned her head away he stared at the back of her neck, and when she looked at the fire he gazed at her profile, and always with that puzzled look, as if he hadn’t yet come to believe that she was the newspaper Miss Jennings.

After everything had been explained to him, including Mr. Jennings’ liver and disposition, she turned to him and said: 

“We are in your hands, you see, Mr. Pierce.  Are you going to help us?” And when she asked him that, it was plain to me that he was only sorry he couldn’t die helping.

“If everybody agrees to it,” he said, looking at her, “and you all think it’s feasible and I can carry it off, I’m perfectly willing to try.”

“Oh, it’s feasible,” Mr. Dick said in a relieved voice, getting up and beginning to strut up and down the room.  “It isn’t as though I’m beyond call.  You can come out here and consult me if you get stuck.  And then there’s Minnie; she knows a good bit about the old place.”

Mr. Sam looked at me and winked.

“Of course,” said Mr. Dick, “I expect to retain control, you understand that, I suppose, Pierce?  You can come out every day for instructions.  I dare say sanatoriums are hardly your line.”

Mr. Pierce was looking at Miss Patty and she knew it.  When a woman looks as unconscious as she did it isn’t natural.

“Eh—­oh, well no, hardly,” he said, coming to himself; “I’ve tried everything else, I believe.  It can’t be worse than carrying a bunch of sweet peas from garden to garden.”

Mr. Dick stopped walking and turned suddenly to stare at Mr. Pierce.

“Sweet—­what?” he said.

Everybody else was talking, and I was the only one who saw him change color.

“Sweet peas,” said Mr. Pierce.  “And that reminds me—­I’d like to make one condition, Mr. Carter.  I feel in a measure responsible for the company; most of them have gone back to New York, but the leading woman is sick at the hotel in Finleyville.  I’d like to bring her here for two weeks to recuperate.  I assure you, I have no interest in her, but I’m sorry for her; she’s had the mumps.”

“Mumps!” everybody said together, and Mr. Sam looked at his brother-in-law.

“Kid in the play got ’em, and they spread around,” Mr. Pierce explained.  “Nasty disease.”

“Why, you’ve just had them, too, Dicky!” said his wife.  They all turned to look at him, and I must say his expression was curious.

Luckily, I had the wit to knock over the breakfast basket, which was still there, and when we’d gathered up the broken china, Mr. Dick had got himself in hand.