course not!" exclaimed Mr. Van Alstyne testily. "He was raising the
window for a girl in the next seat."

"Precisely!" I said. "Would you know the girl well enough to trace her?"

"That's ridiculous, you know," he said trying to be polite. "Out of a
thousand and one things that may have detained him--"

"Only one thing ever detains Mr. Dick, and that always detains him," I
said solemnly. "That's a girl. You're a newcomer in the family, Mr. Van
Alstyne; you don't remember the time he went down here to the station to
see his Aunt Agnes off to the city, and we found him three weeks later
in Oklahoma trying to marry a widow with five children."

Mr. Van Alstyne dropped into a chair, and through force of habit I gave
him a glass of spring water.

"This was a pretty girl, too," he said dismally.

I sat down on the other side of the fireplace, and it seemed to me that
father's crayon enlargement over the mantel shook its head at me.

After a minute Mr. Van Alstyne drank the water and got up.

"I'll have to tell my wife," he said. "Who's running the place, anyhow?
You?"

"Not--exactly," I explained, "but, of course, when anything comes up
they consult me. The housekeeper is a fool, and now that the house
doctor's gone--"

"Gone! Who's looking after the patients?"

"Well, most of them have been here before," I explained, "and I know
their treatment--the kind of baths and all that."

"Oh, YOU know the treatment!" he said, eying me. "And why did the house
doctor go?"

"He ordered Mr. Moody to take his spring water hot. Mr. Moody's spring
water has been ordered cold for eleven years, and I refused to change.
It was between the doctor and me, Mr. Van Alstyne."

"Oh, of course," he said, "if it was a matter of principle--" He
stopped, and then something seemed to strike him. "I say," he said;
"about the doctor--that's all right, you know; lots of doctors and all
that. But for heaven's sake, Minnie, don't discharge the cook."

Now that was queer, for it had been running in my head all morning that
in the slack season it would be cheaper to get a good woman instead of
the chef and let Tillie, the diet cook, make the pastry.

Mr. Sam picked up his hat and looked at his watch.

"Eleven thirty," he said, "and no sign of that puppy yet. I guess it's
up to the police."

"If there was only something to do," I said, with a lump in my throat,
"but to have to sit and do nothing while the old place dies it's--it's
awful, M