“Here, somebody, a glass, quick!  A bottle’s broken!”

“Did anybody remember to bring salt and pepper?”

“Dear Mr. Thoburn!” It sounded like Miss Cobb.  “Think of thinking of all this!”

“The credit is not mine, dear lady,” Mr. Thoburn said.  “Where the deuce is that corkscrew?  No, dear lady, man makes his own destiny, but his birth date remains beyond his control.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” somebody said, “to Mr. Thoburn’s birthday being beyond his control!”

There was the clink of glasses, but I had remembered what it had been that I was to remember.  And now it was too late.  I was trapped in the pantry of my spring-house and Mr. Pierce was probably asleep.  I clutched my aching head and tried to think.  I was roused by hearing somebody say that Miss Jennings had no glass, and by steps nearing the pantry.  I had just time to slip the bolt.

“Pantry’s locked!” said a voice.

“Drat that Minnie!” somebody else said.  “The girl’s a nuisance.”

“Hush!” Miss Summers said.  “She’s probably in there now—­taking down what we say and what we eat.  Convicting us out of our own mouths.”

I held my breath and the knob rattled.  Then they found a glass for Miss
Patty and forgot the pantry.

Under cover of the next burst of noises I tried the pantry window, but it was frozen shut.  Nothing but a hammer would have loosened it.  I began to dig at it with a wire hairpin, but I hadn’t much hope.

The fun in the spring-house was getting fast and furious.  Miss Summers was leaning against the pantry door and I judged that most of the men in the room were around her, as usual.  I put my ear to the panel of the door, and I could pretty nearly see what was going on.  They were toasting Mr. Thoburn, and getting hungrier every minute as the supper was put out on the card-tables.

“To the bottle!” somebody said.  “In infancy, the milk bottle; in our prime, the wine bottle; in our dotage, the pill bottle.”

Mr. von Inwald came over and stood beside Miss Summers, and I could hear every whisper.

“I have good news for you,” she said in an undertone.

“Oh!  And what?”

“Sh!  You may recall,” she said, “the series of notes, letters, epistles, with which you have been honoring me lately?”

“How could I forget?  They were written in my heart’s blood!”

“Indeed!” Her voice lifted its eyebrows, so to speak.  “Well, somebody got in my room last night and stole I dare say a pint of your heart’s blood.  They’re gone.”

He was pretty well upset, as he might be, and she stood by and listened to the things he said, which, if they were as bad in English as they sounded in German, I wouldn’t like to write down.

And when he cooled down and condensed, as you may say, into English, he said Miss Jennings must have seen the letters, for she would hardly speak to him.  And Miss Summers said she hoped Miss Jennings had—­she was too nice a girl to treat shamefully.