“Grumping!” Mr. Dick answered.  He went over and stood looking down at her with his hands in his pockets and his hair ruffled as if he’d been running his fingers through it.  She never moved a shoulder.

“Dorothy,” he said.  “Here’s Minnie.”

She pretended not to hear.

“Dorothy!” he repeated.  “I wish you wouldn’t be such a g—­Confound it, Dolly, be reasonable.  Do you want to make me look like a fool?”

She turned her face enough to uncover one eye.

“It wouldn’t be difficult,” she answered, staring at him with the one eye.  It was red from crying.

“Now listen, Dolly.”  He got down on one knee beside the cot and tried to take her hand, but she jerked it away.  “I’ve tried wearing my hair that way, and it—­it isn’t becoming, to say the least.  I don’t mind having it wet and brushed back in a pompadour, if you insist, but I certainly do balk at the ribbon.”

“You’ve only got to wear the ribbon an hour or so, until it dries.”  She brought her hand forward an inch or so and he took it and kissed it.  It should have been slapped.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” he said.  “You can fix it any way you please, when it’s too late for old Sam or Pierce to drop in, and I’ll wear the confounded ribbon all night.  Won’t that do?”

But she had seen the note and sat up and held out her hand for it.  She was wearing one of Miss Patty’s dresses and it hung on her—­not that Miss Patty was large, but she had a beautiful figure, and Mrs. Dicky, of course, was still growing and not properly filled out.

“Dick!” she said suddenly, “what do you think?  Oskar is here!  Pat’s in the wildest excitement.  He’s in town, and Aunt Honoria has telephoned to know what to do!  Listen:  he is incog., of course, and registered as Oskar von Inwald.  He did an awfully clever thing—­came in through Canada while the papers thought he was in St. Moritz.”

“For heaven’s sake,” replied Mr. Dick, “tell her not to ask him here.  I shouldn’t know how to talk to him.”

“He speaks lovely English,” declared Mrs. Dick, still reading.

“I know all that,” he said, walking around nervously, “but if he’s going to be my brother-in-law, I suppose I don’t get down on my knees and knock my head on the floor.  What do I say to him?  Four Highness?  Oh, I’ve known a lord or two, but that’s different.  You call them anything you like and lend them money.”

“I dare say you can with Oskar, too.”  Mrs. Dicky put the note down and sighed.  “Well, he’s coming.  Pat says dad won’t go back to town until he’s had twenty-one baths, and he’s only had eleven and she’s got to stay with him.  And you needn’t worry about what to call Oskar.  He’s not to know we’re here.”

I was worried on my way back to the spring-house—­not that the prince would make much difference, as far as I could see things being about as bad as they could be.  But some of the people were talking of leaving, and since we had to have a prince it seemed a pity he wasn’t coming with all his retinue and titles.  It would have been a good ten thousand dollars’ worth of advertising for the place, and goodness knows we needed it.