“Oh, if you’re going to be funny!” Mr. Dick said savagely, “we’ll not tell you any more.  I’ve been counting on you, Minnie.  You’ve been here so long.  You know,” he said to his wife, “when I was a little shaver I thought Minnie had webbed-feet—­she was always on the bank, like a duck.  You are a duck, Minnie,” he says to me; “a nice red-headed duck!  Now don’t be quirky and spoil everything.”

I couldn’t be light-hearted to save my life.

“Your sister’s been wild all day,” I told Mrs. Dick.  “She got your letter to-day—­yesterday—­but I don’t think she’s told your father yet.”

“What!” she screeched, and caught at the mantelpiece to hold herself.  “Not Pat!” she said, horrified, “and father!  Here!”

Well, I listened while they told me.  They hadn’t had the faintest idea that Mr. Jennings and Miss Patty were there at the sanatorium.  The girl had been making a round of visits in the Christmas holidays, and instead of going back to school she’d sent a forged excuse and got a month off—­she hadn’t had any letters, of course.  The plan had been not to tell anybody but her sister until Mr. Dick had made good at the sanatorium.

“The idea was this, Minnie,” said Mr. Dick.  “Old—­I mean Mr. Jennings is—­is not well; he has a chronic indisposition—­”

“Disposition, I call it,” put in Mr. Jennings’ daughter.

“And he’s apt to regard my running away with Dorothy when I haven’t a penny as more of an embezzlement than an elopement.”

“Fiddle!” exclaimed Mrs. Dick.  “I asked you to marry me, and now they’re here and have to spoil it all.”

The thought of her father and his disposition suddenly overpowered her and she put her yellow head on the back of a chair and began to cry.

“I—­I can’t tell him!” she sobbed.  “I wrote to Pat,—­why doesn’t Pat tell him?  I’m going back to school.”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort.  You’re a married woman now, and where I go you go.  My country is your country, and my sanatorium is your sanatorium.”  He was in a great rage.

But she got up and began trying to pull on her fur coat, and her jaw was set.  She looked like her father for a minute.

“Where are you going?” he asked, looking scared.

“Anywhere.  I’ll go down to the station and take the first train, it doesn’t matter where to.”  She picked up her muff, but he went over and stood against the door.

“Not a step without me!” he declared.  “I’ll go with you, of course; you know that.  I’m not afraid of your father:  I’d as soon as not go in and wake him now and tell him the whole thing—­that you’ve married a chap who isn’t worth the butter on his bread, who can’t buy you kid gloves—­”

“But you will, as soon as the sanatorium succeeds!” she put in bravely.  She put down her muff.  “Don’t tell him to-night, anyhow.  Maybe Pat will think of some way to break it to him.  She can do a lot with father.”