It had stopped snowing and the sun was shining, although it was so cold that the snow blew like powder.  By eleven o’clock every one who could walk had come to the spring-house.  Even Mr. Jennings came down in a wheeled chair, and Senator Biggs, still looking a sort of grass-green and keeping his eyes off me, came and sat in a corner, with a book called Fast versus Feast held so that every one could see.

There were bridge tables going, and five hundred, and a group around the slot-machine, while the crocheters formed a crowd by themselves, exchanging gossip and new stitches.

About twelve o’clock Mr. Thoburn came in, and as he opened the door, in leaped Arabella.  The women made a fuss over the creature and cuddled her, and when I tried to put her out everybody objected.  So she stayed, and Miss Summers put her through a lot of tricks, while the men crowded around.  As I said before, Miss Summers was a first favorite with the men.

Mr. von Inwald and Miss Patty came in just then and stood watching.

“And now,” said Mr. von Inwald, “I propose, as a reward to Miss Arabella, a glass of this wonderful water.  Minnie, a glass of water for Arabella!”

“She doesn’t drink out of one of my glasses,” I declared angrily.

“It’s one of my rules that dogs—­”

“Tut!” said Mr. Thoburn.  “What’s good for man is good for beast.  Besides, the little beggar’s thirsty.”

Well, they made a great fuss about the creature’s being thirsty, and so finally I got a panful of spring water and it drank until I thought it would burst.  I’m not vicious, as I say, but I wish it had.

Well, the dog finished and lay down by the fire, and everything seemed to go on as before.  Mr. Thoburn was in a good humor, and he came over to the spring and brought a trayful of glasses.

“To save you steps, Minnie!” he explained.  “You have no idea how it pains me to see you working.  Gentlemen, name your poison!”

“A frappe with blotting-paper on the side,” Mr. Moody snarled from the slot-machine.  “If I drink much more, I’ll have to be hooped up like a barrel.”

“Just what is the record here?” the bishop asked.  “I’m ordered eight glasses, but I find it more than a sufficiency.”

“We had one man here once who could drink twenty-five at a time,” I said, “but he was a German.”

“He was a tank,” Mr. Sam corrected grumpily.  He was watching something on the floor—­I couldn’t see what.  “All I need is to swallow a few goldfish and I’d be a first-class aquarium.”

“What I think we should do,” Miss Cobb said, “is to try to find out just what suits us, and stick to that.  I’m always trying.”

“Damned trying!” Mr. Jennings snarled, and limped over for more water.  “I’d like to know where to go for rheumatism.”

“I got mine here,” said Mr. Thoburn cheerfully.  “It’s my opinion this place is rheumatic as well as malarious.  And as for this water, with all due respect to the spirit in the spring”—­he bowed to me—­“I think it’s an insult to ask people to drink it.  It isn’t half so strong as it was two years ago.  Taste it; smell it!  I ask the old friends of the sanatorium, is that water what it used to be?”