s, and showed the little
frame house where Miss Patty was born--as if she's had anything to do
with it. And so now I was cutting out the picture of her and the prince
and the article underneath which told how many castles she'd have, and I
don't mind saying I was sniffling a little bit, for I couldn't get used
to the idea. And suddenly the door closed softly and there was a rustle
behind me. When I turned it was Miss Patty herself. She saw the clipping
immediately, and stopped just inside the door.

"YOU, TOO," she said. "And we've come all this distance to get away from
just that."

"Well, I shan't talk about it," I replied, not holding out my hand, for
with her, so to speak, next door to being a princess--but she leaned
right over and kissed me. I could hardly believe it.

"Why won't you talk about it?" she insisted, catching me by the
shoulders and holding me off. "Minnie, your eyes are as red as your
hair!"

"I don't approve of it," I said. "You might as well know it now as
later, Miss Patty. I don't believe in mixed marriages. I had a cousin
that married a Jew, and what with him making the children promise to be
good on the Talmud and her trying to raise them with the Bible, the poor
things is that mixed up that it's pitiful."

She got a little red at that, but she sat down and took up the clipping.

"He's much better looking than that, Minnie," she said soberly, "and
he's a good Catholic. But if that's the way you feel we'll not talk
about it. I've had enough trouble at home as it is."

"I guess from that your father isn't crazy about it," I remarked,
getting her a glass of spring water. The papers had been full of how Mr.
Jennings had forbidden the prince the house when he had been in America
the summer before.

"Certainly he's crazy about it--almost insane!" she said, and smiled at
me in her old way over the top of the glass. Then she put down the glass
and came over to me. "Minnie, Minnie," she said, "if you only knew how
I've wanted to get away from the newspapers and the gossips and come to
this smelly little spring-house and talk things over with a red-haired,
sharp-tongued, mean-dispositioned spring-house girl--!"

And with that I began to blubber, and she came into my arms like a baby.

"You're all I've got," I declared, over and over, "and you're going to
live in a country where they harness women with dogs, and you'll never
hear an English word from morning to night."

"Stuff!" She gave me a