It wasn’t only the steam and their clothes being hidden; it had started with the scare at the spring in the morning, and when they had told him what they thought about that, they went back still further and bellowed about the mismanagement of the place ever since he had taken charge, and the food, and the steam-heat, and the new rules—­oh, they hated him all right, and they told him so, purple-faced with rage and heat, dancing around him and shaking one fist in his face, as I say, while they held their sheets fast with the other.

And I stood there and watched, my mind awhirl, expecting every minute to hear that they were all leaving, or to have some one forget and shake both fists at once.

And that’s how it ended finally—­I mean, of course, that they said they would all leave immediately, and that he ought to be glad to have them go quietly, and not have him jailed for malicious mischief or compounding a felony.  The whole thing was an outrage, and the three train would leave the house as empty as a squeezed lemon.

I wanted to go forward and drop on my knees and implore them to remember the old doctor, and the baths they’d had when nothing went wrong, and the days when they’d sworn that the spring kept them young and well, but there was something in Mr. Pierce’s face that kept me back.

“At three o’clock, then,” he said.  “Very well.”

“Don’t be a fool!” I heard Mr. Sam from the crowd.

“Is that all you have to say?” roared Mr. von Inwald.  I hadn’t noticed him before.  He had his sheet on in Grecian style and it looked quite ornamental although a little short.  “Haven’t you any apology to make, sir?”

“Neither apology nor explanation to you,” Mr. Pierce retorted.  And to the other:  “It is an unfortunate accident—­incident, if you prefer.”  He looked at Thoburn, who was the only one in a bath robe, and who was the only cheerful one in the lot.  “I had refused a request of the bath man’s and he has taken this form of revenge.  If this gives me the responsibility I am willing to take it.  If you expect me to ask you to stay I’ll not do it.  I don’t mind saying that I am as tired of all this as you are.”

“As tired of what?” demanded Mr. Moody, pushing forward out of the crowd.  Mr. Sam was making frantic gestures to catch Mr. Pierce’s eye, but he would not look at him.

“Of all this,” he said.  “Of charging people sanatorium prices under a pretense of making them well.  Does anybody here imagine he’s going to find health by sitting around in an overstuffed leather chair, with the temperature at eighty, eating five meals a day, and walking as far as the mineral spring for exercise?”

There was a sort of angry snarl in the air, and Mr. Sam threw up his one free hand in despair.

“In fact,” Mr. Pierce went on, “I’d about decided on a new order of things for this place anyhow.  It’s going to be a real health resort, run for people who want to get well or keep well.  People who wish to be overfed, overheated and coddled need not come—­or stay.”