a throb at that minute.

CHAPTER IV

AND A WAY

Mr. Sam wasn't taking any chances, for the next day he went to the city
himself to bring Mr. Dick up. Everything was quiet that day and the day
after, except that on the second day I had a difference of opinion with
the house doctor and he left.

The story of the will had got out, of course, and the guests were
waiting to see Mr. Dick come and take charge. I got a good bit of gossip
from Miss Cobb, who had had her hair cut short after a fever and used to
come out early in the morning and curl it all over her head, heating the
curler on the fire log. I never smell burnt hair that I don't think
of Miss Cobb trying to do the back of her neck. She was one of our
regulars, and every winter for ten years she'd read me the letters she
had got from an insurance agent who'd run away with a married woman the
day before the wedding. She kept them in a bundle, tied with lavender
ribbon.

It was on the third day, I think, that Miss Cobb told me that Miss Patty
and her father had had a quarrel the day before. She got it from one of
the chambermaids. Mr. Jennings was a liver case and not pleasant at any
time, but he had been worse than usual. Annie, the chambermaid, told
Miss Cobb that the trouble was about settlements, and that the more Miss
Patty tried to tell him it was the European custom the worse he got.
Miss Patty hadn't come down to breakfast that day, and Mr. Moody and
Senator Biggs made a wager in the Turkish bath--according to Miss
Cobb--Mr. Moody betting the wedding wouldn't come off at all.

"Of course," Miss Cobb said, wetting her finger and trying the iron to
see if it was hot, "of course, Minnie, they're not married yet, and if
Father Jennings gets ugly and makes any sort of scandal it's all off. A
scandal just now would be fatal. These royalties are very touchy about
other people's reputations."

Well, I heard that often enough in the next few days.

Mr. Sam hadn't come back by the morning of the sixth day, but he wired
his wife the day before that Mr. Dick was on the way. But we met every
train with a sleigh, and he didn't come. I was uneasy, knowing Mr. Dick,
and Mrs. Sam was worried, too.

By that time everybody was waiting and watching, and on the early train
on the sixth day came the lawyer, a Mr. Stitt. Mr. Thoburn was going
around with a sort of greasy smile, and if I could have poisoned him
safely I'd have done it.

It had been snowing hard