She was as happy to have escaped the reporters and the people she knew as a child, and she sat down on the floor in front of the fire and began to shell the corn into the popper, as if she’d done it only the day before.

“I guess you’re safe enough here,” I said.  “It’s always slack in January—­only a few chronics and the Saturday-to-Monday husbands, except a drummer now and then who drives up from Finleyville.  It’s too early for drooping society buds, and the chronic livers don’t get around until late March, after the banquet season closes.  It will be pretty quiet for a while.”

And at that minute the door was flung open, and Bath-house Mike staggered in.

“The old doctor!” he gasped.  “He’s dead, Miss Minnie—­died just now in the hot room in the bathhouse!  One minute he was givin’ me the divil for something or other, and the next—­I thought he was asleep.”

Something that had been heavy in my breast all afternoon suddenly seemed to burst and made me feel faint all over.  But I didn’t lose my head.

“Does anybody know yet?” I asked quickly.  He shook his head.

“Then he didn’t die in the bath-house, Mike,” I said firmly.  “He died in his bed, and you know it.  If it gets out that he died in the hot room I’ll have the coroner on you.”

Miss Patty was standing by the railing of the spring.  I got my shawl and started out after Mike, and she followed.

“If the guests ever get hold of this they’ll stampede.  Start any excitement in a sanatorium,” I said, “and one and all they’ll dip their thermometers in hot water and swear they’ve got fever!”

And we hurried to the house together.

CHAPTER III

A WILL

Well, we got the poor old doctor moved back to his room, and had one of the chambermaids find him there, and I wired to Mrs. Van Alstyne, who was Mr. Dicky Carter’s sister, and who was on her honeymoon in South Carolina.  The Van Alstynes came back at once, in very bad tempers, and we had the funeral from the preacher’s house in Finleyville so as not to harrow up the sanatorium people any more than necessary.  Even as it was a few left, but about twenty of the chronics stayed, and it looked as if we might be able to keep going.

Miss Patty sent to town for a black veil for me, and even went to the funeral.  It helped to take my mind off my troubles to think who it was that was holding my hand and comforting me, and when, toward the end of the service, she got out her handkerchief and wiped her eyes I was almost overcome, she being, so to speak, in the very shadow of a throne.

After it was all over the relatives gathered in the sun parlor of the sanatorium to hear the will—­Mr. Van Alstyne and his wife and about twenty more who had come up from the city for the funeral and stayed over—­on the house.

Well, the old doctor left me the buttons for his full dress waistcoat and his favorite copy of Gray’s Anatomy.  I couldn’t exactly set up housekeeping with my share of the estate, but when the lawyer read that part of the will aloud and a grin went around the room I flounced out of my chair.