e was
a man, and not a little cub with a body hardly big enough to carry his
forefathers' weaknesses. But he had a cold eye and a warm mouth,
and that sort of man is generally a social success and a matrimonial
failure.

It wasn't until toward night that I remembered I'd been talking to a
real prince and I hadn't once said "your Highness" or "your Excellency"
or whatever I should have said. I had said "You!"

I had hardly closed the door after them when it opened again and Mr.
Pierce came in. He shut the door and, going over to one of the tables,
put a package down on it.

"Here's the stuff you wanted for the spring, Minnie," he announced. "I
suppose I can't do anything more than register a protest against it?"

"You needn't bother doing that," I answered, "unless it makes you feel
better. Your authority ends at that door. Inside the spring-house I'm in
control."

(It's hard to believe, with things as they are, that I once really
believed that. But I did. It was three full days later that I learned
that I'd been mistaken!)

Well, he sat there and looked at nothing while I heated water in my
brass kettle over the fire and dissolved the things against Thoburn's
quick eye the next day, and he didn't say anything. He had a gift for
keeping quiet, Mr. Pierce had. It got on my nerves after a while.

"Things are doing better," I remarked, stirring up my mixture.

"Yes," he said, without moving.

"I suppose they're happier now they have a doctor?"

"Yes--no--I don't know. He's not much of a doctor, you know--and there
don't seem to be any medical books around."

"There's one on the care and feeding of infants in the circulating
library," I said, "and he can have my Anatomy."

"You're generous!" he remarked, with one of his quick smiles.

"It's a book," I snapped, and fell to stirring again. But he was moping
once more, with his feet out and his hands behind his head, staring at
the ceiling.

"I say, Minnie--"

"Yes?"

"Miss--Miss Jennings and the von Inwald were here just now, weren't
they? I passed them on the bridge."

"Yes."

"What--how do you like him?"

"Better than I expected and not so well as I might," I said. "If you are
going to the house soon you might take Miss Patty her handkerchief. It's
there under that table."

I took my mixture into the pantry and left it to cool. But as I started
back I stopped. He had got the handkerchief and was standing in front of
the fire, holding it in the pal