“Old Pierce is right,” he said.  “Remember, Miss Minnie, I’ve nothing against you or your mineral spring; in fact, I’m strong for you both.  But while I’m out of the ring now for good—­I don’t mind saying to you what I said to Pierce, that the only thing that gets into training here, as far as I can see, is a fellow’s pocketbook.”

We went back to the house and I straightened the news stand, Amanda King having taken a violent toothache as a result of the excitement.  The Jenningses were packing to go, and Miss Summers had got a bottle of peroxide and shut herself in her room.  At six o’clock Tillie beckoned to me from the door of the officers’ dining-room and said she’d put the basket in the snow by the grape arbor.  I got ready, with a heavy heart, to take it out.  I had forgotten all about their dinner, for one thing, and I had to carry bad news.

But Mr. Pierce had been there before me.  I saw tracks in the fresh snow, for, praise heaven! it had snowed all that week and our prints were filled up almost as fast as we made them.  When I got to the shelter-house it was in a wild state of excitement.  Mrs. Dick, with her cheeks flushed, had gathered all her things on the cot and was rolling them up in sheets and newspapers.  But Mr. Dick was sitting on the box in front of the fire with his curly hair standing every way.  He had been roasting potatoes, and as I opened the door, he picked one up and poked at it to see if it was done.

“Damn!” he said, and dropped it.

Mrs. Dick sat on the cot rolling up a pink ribbon and looked at him.

“If you want to know exactly my reason for insisting on moving to-night, I’ll tell you,” she said, paying no attention to me.  “It is your disposition.”

He didn’t say anything, but he put his foot on the potato and smashed it.

“If I had to be shut in here with you one more day,” she went on, “I’d hate you.”

“Why the one more day?” he asked, without looking up.

But she didn’t answer him.  She was in the worst kind of a temper; she threw the ribbon down, and coming over, lifted the lid of my basket and looked in.

“Ham again!” she exclaimed ungratefully.  “Thanks so much for remembering us, Minnie.  I dare say our dinner to-day slipped your mind!”

“I wonder if it strikes you, Minnie,” Mr. Dick said, noticing me for the first time, “that if you and Sam hadn’t been so confounded meddling, that fellow Pierce would be washing buggies in the village livery-stable where he belongs, and I’d be in one piece of property that’s as good as gone this minute.”

“Egg salad and cheese!” said Mrs. Dick.  “I’m sick of cheese.  If that’s the kind of supper you’ve been serving—­”

But I was in a bad humor, anyhow, and I’d had enough.  I stood just inside the door and I told them I’d done the best I could, not for them, but because I’d promised the old doctor, and if I’d made mistakes I’d answer for them to him if I ever met him in the next world.  And in the meantime I washed my hands of the whole thing, and they might make out as best they could.  I was going.