In my wash-stand drawer I’d kept all the clippings about her coming out and the winter she spent in Washington and was supposed to be engaged to the president’s son, and the magazine article that told how Mr. Jennings had got his money by robbing widows and orphans, and showed the little frame house where Miss Patty was born—­as if she’s had anything to do with it.  And so now I was cutting out the picture of her and the prince and the article underneath which told how many castles she’d have, and I don’t mind saying I was sniffling a little bit, for I couldn’t get used to the idea.  And suddenly the door closed softly and there was a rustle behind me.  When I turned it was Miss Patty herself.  She saw the clipping immediately, and stopped just inside the door.

“You, too,” she said.  “And we’ve come all this distance to get away from just that.”

“Well, I shan’t talk about it,” I replied, not holding out my hand, for with her, so to speak, next door to being a princess—­but she leaned right over and kissed me.  I could hardly believe it.

“Why won’t you talk about it?” she insisted, catching me by the shoulders and holding me off.  “Minnie, your eyes are as red as your hair!”

“I don’t approve of it,” I said.  “You might as well know it now as later, Miss Patty.  I don’t believe in mixed marriages.  I had a cousin that married a Jew, and what with him making the children promise to be good on the Talmud and her trying to raise them with the Bible, the poor things is that mixed up that it’s pitiful.”

She got a little red at that, but she sat down and took up the clipping.

“He’s much better looking than that, Minnie,” she said soberly, “and he’s a good Catholic.  But if that’s the way you feel we’ll not talk about it.  I’ve had enough trouble at home as it is.”

“I guess from that your father isn’t crazy about it,” I remarked, getting her a glass of spring water.  The papers had been full of how Mr. Jennings had forbidden the prince the house when he had been in America the summer before.

“Certainly he’s crazy about it—­almost insane!” she said, and smiled at me in her old way over the top of the glass.  Then she put down the glass and came over to me.  “Minnie, Minnie,” she said, “if you only knew how I’ve wanted to get away from the newspapers and the gossips and come to this smelly little spring-house and talk things over with a red-haired, sharp-tongued, mean-dispositioned spring-house girl—!”

And with that I began to blubber, and she came into my arms like a baby.

“You’re all I’ve got,” I declared, over and over, “and you’re going to live in a country where they harness women with dogs, and you’ll never hear an English word from morning to night.”

“Stuff!” She gave me a little shake.  “He speaks as good English as I do.  And now we’re going to stop talking about him—­you’re worse than the newspapers.”  She took off her things and going into my closet began to rummage for the pop-corn.  “Oh, how glad I am to get away,” she sang out to me.  “We’re supposed to have gone to Mexico; even Dorothy doesn’t know.  Where’s the pop-corner or the corn-popper or whatever you call it?”