I've got a joint on my right foot that throbs when it is going to rain
or I am going to have bad luck, and it gave a jump then. I might have
known there was trouble ahead.






CHAPTER II

MISS PATTY ARRIVES

It was pretty quiet in the spring-house that day after the old doctor
left. It had started to snow and only the regulars came out. What with
the old doctor talking about dying, and Miss Patty Jennings gone to
Mexico, when I'd been looking forward to her and her cantankerous old
father coming to Hope Springs for February, as they mostly did, I was
depressed all day. I got to the point where Mr. Moody feeding nickels
into the slot-machine with one hand and eating zwieback with the other
made me nervous. After a while he went to sleep over it, and when he
had slipped a nickel in his mouth and tried to put the zwieback in the
machine he muttered something and went up to the house.

I was glad to be alone. I drew a chair in front of the fire and wondered
what I would do if the old doctor died, and what a fool I'd been not to
be a school-teacher, which is what I studied for.

I was thinking to myself bitterly that all that my experience in the
spring fitted me for was to be a mermaid, when I heard something running