Where Theres a Will | Page 5

And so now I was cutting out the picture of
her and the prince and the article underneath which told how many
castles she'd have, and I don't mind saying I was sniffling a little bit, for
I couldn't get used to the idea. And suddenly the door closed softly and

there was a rustle behind me. When I turned it was Miss Patty herself.
She saw the clipping immediately, and stopped just inside the door.
"YOU, TOO," she said. "And we've come all this distance to get away
from just that."
"Well, I shan't talk about it," I replied, not holding out my hand, for
with her, so to speak, next door to being a princess--but she leaned
right over and kissed me. I could hardly believe it.
"Why won't you talk about it?" she insisted, catching me by the
shoulders and holding me off. "Minnie, your eyes are as red as your
hair!"
"I don't approve of it," I said. "You might as well know it now as later,
Miss Patty. I don't believe in mixed marriages. I had a cousin that
married a Jew, and what with him making the children promise to be
good on the Talmud and her trying to raise them with the Bible, the
poor things is that mixed up that it's pitiful."
She got a little red at that, but she sat down and took up the clipping.
"He's much better looking than that, Minnie," she said soberly, "and
he's a good Catholic. But if that's the way you feel we'll not talk about
it. I've had enough trouble at home as it is."
"I guess from that your father isn't crazy about it," I remarked, getting
her a glass of spring water. The papers had been full of how Mr.
Jennings had forbidden the prince the house when he had been in
America the summer before.
"Certainly he's crazy about it--almost insane!" she said, and smiled at
me in her old way over the top of the glass. Then she put down the
glass and came over to me. "Minnie, Minnie," she said, "if you only
knew how I've wanted to get away from the newspapers and the gossips
and come to this smelly little spring-house and talk things over with a
red-haired, sharp-tongued, mean-dispositioned spring-house girl--!"

And with that I began to blubber, and she came into my arms like a
baby.
"You're all I've got," I declared, over and over, "and you're going to
live in a country where they harness women with dogs, and you'll never
hear an English word from morning to night."
"Stuff!" She gave me a little shake. "He speaks as good English as I do.
And now we're going to stop talking about him--you're worse than the
newspapers." She took off her things and going into my closet began to
rummage for the pop-corn. "Oh, how glad I am to get away," she sang
out to me. "We're supposed to have gone to Mexico; even Dorothy
doesn't know. Where's the pop-corner or the corn-popper or whatever
you call it?"
She was as happy to have escaped the reporters and the people she
knew as a child, and she sat down on the floor in front of the fire and
began to shell the corn into the popper, as if she'd done it only the day
before.
"I guess you're safe enough here," I said. "It's always slack in
January--only a few chronics and the Saturday-to-Monday husbands,
except a drummer now and then who drives up from Finleyville. It's too
early for drooping society buds, and the chronic livers don't get around
until late March, after the banquet season closes. It will be pretty quiet
for a while."
And at that minute the door was flung open, and Bath-house Mike
staggered in.
"The old doctor!" he gasped. "He's dead, Miss Minnie--died just now in
the hot room in the bathhouse! One minute he was givin' me the divil
for something or other, and the next--I thought he was asleep."
Something that had been heavy in my breast all afternoon suddenly
seemed to burst and made me feel faint all over. But I didn't lose my
head.

"Does anybody know yet?" I asked quickly. He shook his head.
"Then he didn't die in the bath-house, Mike," I said firmly. "He died in
his bed, and you know it. If it gets out that he died in the hot room I'll
have the coroner on you."
Miss Patty was standing by the railing of the spring. I got my shawl and
started out after Mike, and she followed.
"If the guests ever get hold of this they'll stampede. Start any
excitement in a sanatorium," I said, "and one and all they'll dip their
thermometers in hot water and swear they've