“I hope she can think of some way to break another Richard Carter to the people in the house,” I said tartly.

“Another Richard Carter!” they said together, and then I told them about how we had waited and got desperate, and how we’d brought in Mr. Pierce at the last minute and that he was asleep now at the house.  They roared.  To save my life I couldn’t see that it was funny.  But when I came to the part about Thoburn being there, and his having had a good look at Mr. Pierce, and that he was waiting around with his jaws open to snap up the place when it fell under the hammer, Mr. Dick stopped laughing and looked serious.

“Lord deliver us from our friends!” he said.  “Between you and Sam, you’ve got things in a lovely mess, Minnie.  What are you going to do about it now?”

“It’s possible we can get by Thoburn,” I said.  “You can slip in to-night, we can get Mr. Pierce out—­Lord knows he’ll be glad to go—­and Miss Dorothy can go back to school.  Then, later, when you’ve got things running and are making good—­”

“I’m not going back to school,” she declared, “but I’ll go away; I’ll not stand in your way, Dicky.”  She took two steps toward the door and waited for him to stop her.

“Nonsense, Minnie,” he exclaimed angrily and put his arm around her, “I won’t be separated from my wife.  You got me into this scrape, and—­”

“I didn’t marry you!” I retorted.  “And I’m not responsible for your father-in-law’s disposition.”

“You’ll have to help us out,” he finished.

“What shall I do?  Murder Mr. Jennings?” I asked bitterly.  “If you expect me to suggest that you both go to the house, and your wife can hide in your rooms—­”

“Why not?” asked Mr. Dick.

Well, I sat down again and explained patiently that it would get out among the servants and cause a scandal, and that even if it didn’t I wasn’t going to have any more deception:  I had enough already.  And after a while they saw it as I did, and agreed to wait and see Miss Patty before they decided.  They wanted to have her wakened at once, but I refused, although I agreed to bring her out first thing in the morning.

“But you can’t stay here,” I said.  “There’ll be Miss Cobb at nine o’clock, and the man comes to light the fire at eight.”

“We could go to the old shelter-house on the golf links,” suggested Mr. Dick, looking me square in the eye. (I took the hint, and Mrs. Dicky never knew he had been hidden there before.)

“Nobody ever goes near it in winter.”  So I put on my slippers again and we started through the snow across the golf links, Mr. Dick carrying a bundle of firewood, and I leading the way with my lantern.  Twice I went into a drift to my waist, and once a rabbit bunted into me head on, and would have scared me into a chill if I hadn’t been shaking already.  The two behind me were cheerful enough.  Mr. Dick pointed out the general direction of the deer park which hides the shelter-house from the sanatorium, and if you’ll believe it, with snow so thick I had to scrape it off the lantern every minute or so, those children planned to give something called A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the deer park among the trees in the spring, to entertain the patients.