“I’m sorry, old man,” he said to Mr. Pierce, “but I’m not in favor of bringing Miss—­the person you speak of—­up to the sanatorium just now.  Mumps, you know—­very contagious, and all that.”

“She’s over that part,” Mr. Pierce said; “she only needs to rest.”

“Certainly—­let her come,” said Mrs. Dicky.  “If they’re as contagious as all that, you haven’t been afraid of my getting them.”

“I—­I’m not in favor of it,” Mr. Dick insisted, looking obstinate.  “The minute you bring an actress here you’ve got the whole place by the ears.”

“Fiddlesticks!” said his sister.  “Because any actress could set you by the ears—­”

Mrs. Dick sat up suddenly.

“Certainly, if she isn’t well bring her up,” said Miss Patty.  “Only—­won’t she know your name is not Carter?”

“She’s discretion itself,” Mr. Pierce said.  “Her salary hasn’t been paid for a month, and as I’m responsible, I’d be glad to see her looked after.”

“I don’t want her here.  I’ll—­I’ll pay her board at the hotel,” Mr. Dick began, “only for heaven’s sake, don’t—­”

He stopped, for every one was staring.

“Why in the world would you do that?” Miss Patty asked.  “Don’t be ridiculous.  That’s the only condition Mr. Pierce has made.”

Mr. Dick stalked to the window and looked out, his hands in his pockets.  I couldn’t help being reminded of the time he had run away from school, when his grandfather found him in the shelter-house and gave him his choice of going back at once or reading medicine with him.

“Oh, bring her up!  Bring her up!” he said without looking around.  “If Pierce won’t stay unless he can play the friend in need, all right.  But don’t come after me if the whole blamed sanatorium swells up with mumps and faints at the sight of a pickle.”

That was Wednesday.

Things at the sanatorium were about the same on the surface.  The women crocheted and wondered what the next house doctor would be like, and the men gambled at the slot-machines and played billiards and grumbled at the food and the management, and when they weren’t drinking spring water they were in the bar washing away the taste of it.  They took twenty minutes on the verandas every day for exercise and kept the house temperature at eighty.  Senator Biggs was still fasting and Mrs. Biggs took to spending all day in the spring-house and turning pale every time she heard his voice.  It was that day, I think, that I found the magazine with Upton Sinclair’s article on fasting stuck fast in a snow-drift, as if it had been thrown violently.

Wednesday afternoon Miss Julia Summers came with three lap robes, a white lace veil and a French poodle in a sleigh and went to bed in one of the best rooms, and that night we started to move out furniture to the shelter-house.

By working almost all night we got the shelter-house fairly furnished, although we made a trail through the snow that looked like a fever chart.  Toward daylight Mr. Sam dropped a wash-bowl on my toe and I went to bed with an arnica compress.