nd everybody's shouting for fresh
air nowadays. They've got somebody to take my place in the house."

"And father needn't know a thing--you can fix that," broke in Mrs. Dick.
"And after your wedding he will be in a better humor; he'll know it's
over and not up to him any more."

Miss Patty came back to the shelter-house again and sat down on the soap
box.

"We MIGHT carry it off," she said. "If I could only go back to town!
But father is in one of his tantrums, and he won't go, or let me go.
The idea!--with Aunt Honoria on the long-distance wire every day, having
hysterics, and my clothes waiting to be tried on and everything. I'm
desperate."

"And all sorts of things being arranged for you!" put in Mrs. Dick
enviously. "And the family jewels being reset in Vienna for you and all
that! It would be great--if you only didn't have to take Oskar with the
jewels!"

Miss Patty frowned.

"You are not going to marry him," she said, with a glance at Mr. Dick,
who, with his coat off, was lying flat on the floor, one arm down in the
hole where the things had been hidden, trying to hook up a can of baked
beans. "If it doesn't turn out well, you and father have certainly done
your part in the way of warning. It's just as Aunt Honoria said; the
family will make a tremendous row beforehand, but afterward, when it all
turns out well, they'll take the credit."

Mr. Dick was busy with the beans and I was turning the eggs. Mrs. Dick
went over to her sister and put her arm around her.

"That's right, Patty," she said, "you're more like mother than I am.
I'm a Jennings all over--except that, heavens be praised, I've got the
Sherwood liver. I guess I'm common plebeian, like dad, too. I'm plebeian
enough, anyhow, to think there's been a lot too much about marriage
settlements and the consent of the emperor in all this, and not enough
about love."

I could have patted Mrs. Dicky on the back for that, and I almost upset
the eggs into the fire. I'm an advocate of marrying for love every time,
although a title and a bunch of family jewels thrown in wouldn't worry
me.

"Do you want me to protest that the man who has asked me to marry him
cares about me?" Miss Patty replied in an angry undertone. "Couldn't
he have married a thousand other girls! Hadn't a marriage been arranged
between him and the cousin--"

"I know all that," Mrs. Dicky said, and her voice sounded older than
Miss Patty's, and motherly. "But--are you in love with him,