Mary Roberts Rinehart

“ Mr. von Inwald glanced past Mr. Pierce to where Doctor Barnes stood behind him, with his cauliflower ear and his pugilist's shoulders. Then he looked at the bottle in his hand, and from it to Miss Patty, standing haughtily by.
"I have borne much for you, Patricia," he said, "but I refuse to be bullied any longer. I shall go to the hotel at Finleyville, and I shall take the little olives with me." He smiled unpleasantly at Mr. Pierce, whose face did not relax.
He walked jauntily to the door and turned, flourishing the bottle. "The land of the free and the home of the brave!" ”

“ Miss Summers exclaimed. But Thoburn went on. The card-players stopped to listen, but Mr. Sam was still staring at something on the floor.
"I tell you, the spring is losing its virtue, and, like a woman, without virtue, it is worthless."
"But interesting!" Mr. Sam said, and stooped down.
"Consider," went on Mr. Thoburn, standing and holding his glass to the light, "how we are at the mercy of this little spring! A convulsion in the bowels of the earth, and its health-giving properties may be changed to the direst poison. ”

“ I waded around to the door and walked in, and there was a grand upsetting of the sealskin coat and my shepherd's plaid shawl. Mr. Dick jumped to his feet and Mrs. Dick sat bolt upright and stared at me over the backs of the chairs.
"Minnie!" cried Mr. Dick. "As I'm a married man, it's Minnie herself; Minnie, the guardian angel! The spirit of the place! Dorothy, don't you remember Minnie?"
She came toward me with her hand out. She was a pretty little thing, not so beautiful as Miss Patty, but with a nice way about her. ”

“ Miss Cobb pushed her forefinger into my shoulder.
"To blackmail me," she said, in a tragic voice, "or perhaps to publish. I've often thought of that myself—they're so beautiful. Letters from a life insurance agent to his lady-love—interesting, you know, and alliterative. As for that woman—!"
"What woman!" said Miss Summers' voice from behind us. We jumped and turned. "I always save myself trouble, so if by any chance you are discussing me—"
"As it happens," Miss Cobb said, glaring at her, "I WAS discussing you."
"Fine!" said Miss Julia. "I love to talk about myself." ”

“ He smiled and got up, emptying his pipe.
"Nevertheless, oh, Minnie, of the glowing hair and heart," he said, "Miss Jennings has disappointed me. You see, I believe in marrying for love."
"Love!" I was disgusted. "Don't talk to me about love! Love is the sort of thing that makes two silly idiots run away and get married and live in a shelter-house, upsetting everybody's plans, while their betters have to worry themselves sick and carry them victuals."
He got up and began to walk up and down the spring-house, scowling at the floor. ”

“ Does anybody here imagine he's going to find health by sitting around in an overstuffed leather chair, with the temperature at eighty, eating five meals a day, and walking as far as the mineral spring for exercise?"
There was a sort of angry snarl in the air, and Mr. Sam threw up his one free hand in despair.
"In fact," Mr. Pierce went on, "I'd about decided on a new order of things for this place anyhow. It's going to be a real health resort, run for people who want to get well or keep well. People who wish to be overfed, overheated and coddled need not come—or stay." ”

“ His hands, that were clutching a chair-back, took a stronger hold, so that the ends of the nails were white.
"You see, Minnie," he said, turning a little pale, "I—I love Miss Jennings myself. You have known it a long time, for you love her, too. It has come to the point that I measure the day by the hours when I can see her. She doesn't care for me; sometimes I think she hates me." He paused here, but Miss Patty didn't move. "I haven't anything to offer a woman except a clean life and the kind of love that a woman could be proud of. ”

“ Human nature can stand a lot but it can't stand everything. He's overdoing it!"
"They like it," I said.
"They think they do," he retorted. "Mark my words, Minnie, if he adds another mile to the walk to-morrow there will be a mutiny. Kingdoms may be lost by an extra blister on a heel."
Mr. von Inwald had been sitting with his feet straight out, scowling, but now he turned and looked at me coolly.
"All that keeps me here," he said, "is Minnie's lovely hair. It takes me mentally back home, Minnie, to a lovely lady—may I have a bit of it to keep by me?" ”

“ Doctor Barnes came to me at the news stand the next morning before gymnasium.
"Well," he said, "you look as busy as a dog with fleas. Have you heard the glad tidings?"
"What?" I asked without much spirit. "I've heard considerable tidings lately, and not much of it has cheered me up any."
He leaned over and ran his fingers up through his hair.
"You know, Miss Minnie," he said, "somebody ought kindly to kill our friend Thoburn, or he'll come to a bad end."
"Shall I do it, or will you?" I said, filling up the chewing-gum jar. (Mr. Pierce had taken away the candy case.) ”

“ I demanded. "Don't be a fool, Tillie. It takes more than two people's pictures in a newspaper with a red heart around them and an overweight cupid above to make a love-match. Love's a word that's used to cover a good many sins and to excuse them all."
"She isn't that kind," said Tillie. "She's—she's as sweet as she's beautiful, and you're as excited as I am, Minnie Waters, and if you're not, what have you got the drinking glass she used last winter put on the top shelf out of reach for?" ”

“ Dick had lost his head and was making for the spring, as if he thought hiding his feet would conceal him. I made frantic gestures to him to go into my pantry, and he went at last, leaving his hat on the table, I left the door and flung it after him—the hat, of course, not the door—and when Miss Summers sauntered in just after, I was on my knees brushing the hearth, with my heart going three-four time and skipping every sixth beat.
"Hello!" she said. "Lovely weather—for polar bears. If the natives wade through this all winter it's no wonder they walk as if they are ham-strung. ”

“ Dicky can not appear as long as I am here, and Pierce takes his place, and I help to keep the secret and to play the game! Well, I can appreciate a joke on myself as well as most people, but—Minnie, Minnie, think of that guilty wretch of a Dicky Carter shaking in the pantry!"
"I don't know what you are talking about," I said, but she only winked and went to the door.
"Don't take it too much to heart," she advised. "Too much loyalty is a vice, not a virtue. And another piece of advice, Minnie—when I find Dicky Carter, stand from under; something will fall." ”

“ From the window we could see the three rows of yellow lights that marked the house, and somebody with a lantern was going down the path toward the stables. Mr. Pierce leaned forward, his hands at the top of the window-sash, and put his forehead against the glass.
"Why is it that a lighted window in a snow-storm always makes a fellow homesick?" he said in his half-mocking way. "If he hasn't got a home it makes him want one." ”

“ As Miss Cobb said, he was impossible.
Well, as if I didn't have my hands full with getting meals to the shelter-house, and trying to find a house doctor, and wondering how long it would be before "Julia" came face to face with Dick Carter somewhere or other, and trying to keep one eye on Thoburn while I kept Mr. Pierce straight with the other—that day, during luncheon, Mike the bath man came out to the spring-house and made a howl about his wages. He'd been looking surly for two days.
"What about your wages?" I snapped. "Aren't you getting what you've always had?" ”

“ I retorted. "They've got to smoke; it's the only work they do."
"We'll see," he said quietly. "And—oh, yes, Minnie, now that we shall not be using the mineral spring—"
"Not use the mineral spring!" I repeated, stupefied.
"Certainly NOT!" he said. "This is a drugless sanatorium, Minnie, from now on. That's part of the theory—no drugs."
"Well, I'll tell you one thing," I snapped, "theory or no theory, you've got to have drugs. No theory that I ever heard of is going to cure Mr. Moody's indigestion and Miss Cobb's neuralgia."
"They won't have indigestion and neuralgia." ”

“ Well, we went out and I took the path I knew best, which was out toward the spring-house. There wasn't a soul in sight. The place looked lonely, with the trees hung with snow, and arching over the board walk. At the little bridge over the creek Doctor Barnes stopped, and leaning over the rail, took a good look at me.
"When you self-contained women go to pieces," he said, "you pretty near smash, don't you? You look as if you'd had a death in your family." ”

“ It's enough to make a man die of senility to have ten years tacked to his age."
"And if," he went on, "if anything happens to me, Minnie, I'm counting on you to do what you can for the old place. You've been here a good many years, Minnie."
"Fourteen years I have been ladling out water at this spring," I said, trying to keep my lips from trembling. "I wouldn't be at home any place else, unless it would be in an aquarium. But don't ask me to stay here and help Mr. Dick sell the old place for a summer hotel. For that's what he'll do."
"He won't sell it," declared the old doctor grimly. ”

“ You spend every waking minute admiring Miss Jennings, while I—there isn't a man in the place who'll talk anything but his joints or his stomach."
She got up and went to the window, and Mr. Sam followed her. Nobody pays any attention to me in the spring-house; I'm a part of it, like the brass rail around the spring, or the clock. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Mr. von Inwald and Mr. Jennings had been closeted together most of the morning, and Mr. von Inwald was whistling as he started out for the military walk. It seemed as if the very thing that had given Mr. Pierce his chance to make good had improved Mr. Jennings' disposition enough to remove the last barrier to Miss Jennings' wedding with somebody else.
Well, what's one man's meat is another man's poison. ”

“ I can understand the reason for Carlsbad or Wiesbaden—it is gay. One sees one's friends; it is—social. But here—!"
He got up and, lifting a window curtain, peered out into the snow.
"Here," he repeated, "shut in by forests and hills, a thousand miles from life—" He shrugged his shoulders and came back to the table. "It is well enough for the father," he went on to Miss Patty, "but for you! Why—it is depressing, gray. The only bit of color in it all is—here, in what you call the spring-house." I thought he meant Miss Patty's cheeks or her lovely violet eyes, but he was looking at my hair. ”

“ I stumbled down the hill to the house, and just before I got to the corner I heard voices, and the shuffling of feet through the snow. The next instant a lantern came around the corner of the house. Mr. Thoburn was carrying it, and behind him were the bishop, Mike the bath man, and Mr. Pierce.
"It's like that man Moody," the bishop was saying angrily, "to send the girl—"
"Piffle!" snarled Mr. Thoburn. "If ever a woman was able to take care of herself—" And then they saw me, and they all stopped and stared. ”

“ Somebody with brains has got to take you young people in hand. You're not able to look after yourselves. I'm fond of Alan Pierce, for one thing, and I don't care to see a sanatorium that might have been the child of my solicitude kidnaped and reared as a summer hotel by Papa Thoburn. ”

“ Hook the money out with a hairpin, Minnie, and buy some shredded wheat in remembrance of me."
He opened the door and a blast of February wind rattled the window-frames. Mr. Sam threw out his chest under his sweater and waved me another good-by.
"Well, I'm off, Minnie," he said. "Take care of yourself and don't sit too tight on the job; learn to rise a bit in the saddle."
"Good-by, Mr. Sam!" I called, putting down Miss Patty's doily and following him to the door; "good-by; better have something before you start to keep you warm." ”

“ I had been standing in the doorway, but he took me by the arm and drew me into the room.
"I wish you'd sit down for about ten minutes, Minnie," he said. "I guess every fellow has a time when he's got to tell his troubles to some good woman—not but that you know mine already. You're as shrewd as you are kind."
I sat down on the edge of a chair. For all I had had so much to do with the sanatorium, I never forgot that I was only the spring-house girl. He threw himself back in his easy chair, with the candle behind him on the table and his arms above his head. ”

“ It would do your heart good to see some politician, coming up to rest his stomach from the free bar in the state house at the capital, enter the spring-house where everybody is playing cards and drinking water and not caring a rap whether he's the man that cleans the windows or the secretary of the navy. If he's been there before, in sixty seconds I have his name on my tongue and a glass of water in his hand, and have asked him about the rheumatism in his right knee and how the children are. ”