“No—­yes,” I answered.

“I’d never have suspected you of them!” she remarked.  “Hardly sheer enough to pull through a finger ring, are they?” She held them up and gazed at them meditatively.  “That’s one thing I draw the line at.  On the boards, you know—­never have worn ’em and never will.  They’re not modest, to my mind,—­and, anyhow, I’m too fat!”

Mr. Sam and his wife came in at that moment, Mr. Sam carrying a bottle of wine for the shelter-house, wrapped in a paper, and two cans of something or other.  He was too busy trying to make the bottle look like something else—­which a good many people have tried and failed at—­to notice what Miss Summers was doing, and she had Miss Cobb’s protectors stuffed in her muff and was standing very dignified in front of the fire by the time they’d shaken off the snow.

“Good morning!” she said.

“Morning!” said Mr. Sam, hanging up his overcoat with one hand, and trying to put the bottle in one of the pockets with the other.  Mrs. Sam didn’t look at her.

“Good morning, Mrs. Van Alstyne!” Miss Summers almost threw it at her.  “I spoke to you before; I guess you didn’t hear me.”

“Oh, yes, I heard you,” answered Mrs. Sam, and turned her back on her.  Give me a little light-haired woman for sheer devilishness!

I’d expected to see Miss Summers fly to pieces with rage, but she stared at Mrs. Sam’s back, and after a minute she laughed.

“I see!” she remarked slowly.  “You’re the sister, aren’t you?”

Mr. Sam had given up trying to hide the bottle and now he set it on the floor with a thump and came over to the fire.

“It’s—­you see, the situation is embarrassing,” he began.  “If we had had any idea—­”

“I might have been still in the Finleyville hotel!” she finished for him.  “Awful thought, isn’t it?”

“Under the circumstances,” went on Mr. Sam, nervously, “don’t you think it would be—­er—­better form if er—­under the circumstances—­”

“I’m thinking of my circumstances,” she put in, good-naturedly.  “If you imagine that six weeks of one-night stands has left me anything but a rural wardrobe and a box of dog biscuit for Arabella, you’re pretty well mistaken.  I haven’t even a decent costume.  All we had left after the sheriff got through was some grass mats, a checked sunbonnet and a pump.”

“Minnie,” Mrs. Sam said coldly, “that little beast of a dog is trying to drink out of the spring!”

I caught her in time and gave her a good slapping.  When I looked up Miss Summers was glaring down at me over the rail.

“Just what do you mean by hitting my dog?” she demanded.  It was the first time I’d seen her angry.

“Just what I appeared to mean,” I answered.  “If you want to take it as a love pat, you may.”  And I stalked to the door and threw the creature out into the snow.  It was the first false step that day; if I’d known what putting that dog out meant—!  “I don’t allow dogs here,” I said, and shut the door.