Mrs. Dick heard me through.  Then she came over and put her hand on mine where it lay on the table.

“You’re perfectly right,” she said.  “I know how you have tried, and that the fault is all that wretched Pierce’s.  You mustn’t mind Mr. Carter, Minnie.  He’s been in that sort of humor all day.”

He looked at her with the most miserable face I ever saw, but he didn’t say anything.  She sighed, the little wretch.

“We’ve all made mistakes,” she said, “and not the least was my thinking that I—­well, never mind.  I dare say we will manage somehow.”

He got up then, his face twisted with misery.

“Say it,” he said.  “You hate me; you shiver if I touch your hand—­oh, I’m not very keen, but I saw that.”

“The remedy for that is very, simple,” she replied coolly.  “You needn’t touch my hand.”

“Stop!” I snapped.  “Just stop before you say something you’ll be sorry for.  Of course, you hate each other.  It beats me, anyhow, why two people who get married always want to get away by themselves until they’re so sick of each other that they don’t get over it the rest of their lives.  The only sensible honeymoon I ever heard of was when one of the chambermaids here married a farmer in the neighborhood.  It was harvest and he couldn’t leave, so she went alone to see her folks and she said it beat having him along all hollow.”

She was setting out the supper, putting things down with a bang.  He didn’t move, although he must have been starving.

“Another thing I’d advise,” I said.  “Eat first and talk after.  You’ll see things different after you’ve got something in your stomach.”

“I wish you wouldn’t meddle, Minnie!” she snapped, and having put down her own plate and knife and fork, not laying a place for him, she went over and tried to get one of the potatoes from the fire.

Well, she burnt her finger, or pretended to, and I guess her solution was as good as mine, for she began to cry, and when I left he was tying it up with a bit of his handkerchief; if she shivered when he kissed it I didn’t notice it.  They were to come up to the house after her father left in the morning, and I was to dismiss all the old help and get new ones so he could take charge and let Mr. Pierce go.

I plodded back with my empty basket.  I had only one clear thought,—­that I wouldn’t have any more tramping across the golf links in the snow.  I was too tired really to care that with the regular winter boarders gone and eight weeks still until Lent, we’d hardly be able to keep going another fortnight.  I wanted to get back to my room and go to bed and forget.

But as I came near the house I saw Mr. Pierce come out on the front piazza and switch on the lights.  He stood there looking out into the snow, and the next minute I saw why.  Coming up the hill and across the lawn was a shadowy line of people, black against the white.  They were not speaking, and they moved without noise over the snow.  I thought for a minute that my brain had gone wrong; then the first figure came into the light, and it was the bishop.  He stood at the front of the steps and looked up at Mr. Pierce.