“Great!” cried Mr. Van Alstyne.  “Let’s have Barnes.  You get him, will you, Pierce?”

Mr. Pierce promised and they started out together.  At the door Mr. Sam turned.

“Oh, by the way, Minnie,” he called, “better gild one of your chairs and put a red cushion on it.  The prince has arrived.”

Well, I thought it all out that afternoon as I washed the glasses, and it was terrible.  I had two people in the shelter-house to feed and look after like babies, with Tillie getting more curious every day about the basket she brought, and not to be held much longer; and I had a man running the sanatorium and running it to the devil as fast as it could go.  Not that he wasn’t a nice young man, big, strong-jawed and all that, but you can’t make a diplomat out of an ordinary man in three days, and it takes more diplomacy to run a sanatorium a week than it does to be secretary of state for four years.  Then I had a prince incognito, and Thoburn stirring up mischief, and the servants threatening to strike, and no house doctor—­

Just as I got to that somebody opened the door behind me and looked in.  I glanced around, and it was a man with the reddest hair I ever saw.  Mine was pale by comparison.  He was rather short and heavy-set, and he had a pleasant face, although not handsome, his nose being slightly bent to the left.  But at first all I could see was his hair.

“Good evening,” he said, edging himself in.  “Are you Miss Waters?”

“Yes,” I said, rising and getting a glass ready, “although I’m not called that often, except by people who want to pun on my name and my business.”  I looked at him sharply, but he hadn’t intended any pun.

He took off his hat and came over to the spring where I was filling his glass.

“If that’s for me, you needn’t bother,” he said.  “If it tastes as it smells, I’m not thirsty.  My name’s Barnes, and I was to wait here for Mr. Van Alstyne.”

“Barnes!” I repeated.  “Then you’re the doctor.”

He grinned, and stood turning his hat around in his hands.

“Not exactly,” he said.  “I graduated in medicine a good many years ago, but after a year of it, wearing out more seats of trousers waiting for patients than I earned enough to pay for, and having to have new trousers, I took to other things.”

“Oh, yes,” I said.  “You’re an actor now.”

He looked thoughtful.

“Some people think I’m not,” he answered, “but I’m on the stage.  Graduated there from prize-fighting.  Prize-fighting, the stage, and then writing for magazines—­that’s the usual progression.  Sometimes, as a sort of denouement before the final curtain, we have dinner at the White House.”

I took a liking to the man at once.  It was a relief to have somebody who was willing to tell all about himself and wasn’t incognito, or in hiding, or under somebody else’s name.  I put a fresh log on the fire, and as it blazed up I saw him looking at me.