ers came with three lap robes, a
white lace veil and a French poodle in a sleigh and went to bed in one
of the best rooms, and that night we started to move out furniture to
the shelter-house.

By working almost all night we got the shelter-house fairly furnished,
although we made a trail through the snow that looked like a fever
chart. Toward daylight Mr. Sam dropped a wash-bowl on my toe and I went
to bed with an arnica compress.

I limped out in time to be on hand before Miss Cobb got there, but what
with a chilblain on my heel and hardly any sleep for two nights--not to
mention my toe--I wasn't any too pleasant.

"It's my opinion you're overeating, Minnie," Miss Cobb said. "You're
skin's a sight!"

"You needn't look at it," I retorted.

She burned the back of her neck just then and it was three minutes
before she could speak. When she could she was considerably milder.

"Just give it a twist or two, Minnie, won't you?" she said, holding out
the curler. "I haven't been able to sleep on the back of my head for
three weeks."

Well, I curled her hair for her and she told me about Miss Summers being
still shut in her room, and how she'd offered Mike an extra dollar to
give the white poodle a Turkish bath--it being under the weather as to
health--and how Mike had soaked the little beast for an hour in a tub
of water, forgetting the sulphur, and it had come out a sort of mustard
color, and how Miss Summers had had hysterics when she saw it.

"Mike dipped him in bluing to bleach him again, or rather 'her'--it's
name is Arabella--" Miss Cobb said, "but all it did was to make it
mottled like an Easter egg. Everybody is charmed. There were no dogs
allowed while the old doctor lived. Things were different."

"Yes, things were different," I assented, limping over to heat the
curler. "How--how does Mr. Carter get along?"

Miss Cobb put down her hand-mirror and sniffed.

"Well," she said, "goodness knows I'm no trouble maker, but somebody
ought to tell that young man a few things. He's forever looking at
the thermometer and opening windows. I declare, if I hadn't brought my
woolen tights along I'd have frozen to death at breakfast. Everybody's
complaining."

I put that away in my mind to speak about. It was only by nailing the
windows shut and putting strips of cotton batting around the cracks that
we'd ever been able to keep people there in the winter. I had my first
misgiving then. Heaven knows I didn't realize wh