letter to-day--yesterday--but I don't think she's told your father yet."

"What!" she screeched, and caught at the mantelpiece to hold herself.
"Not Pat!" she said, horrified, "and father! Here!"

Well, I listened while they told me. They hadn't had the faintest idea
that Mr. Jennings and Miss Patty were there at the sanatorium. The girl
had been making a round of visits in the Christmas holidays, and instead
of going back to school she'd sent a forged excuse and got a month
off--she hadn't had any letters, of course. The plan had been not
to tell anybody but her sister until Mr. Dick had made good at the
sanatorium.

"The idea was this, Minnie," said Mr. Dick. "Old--I mean Mr. Jennings
is--is not well; he has a chronic indisposition--"

"Disposition, I call it," put in Mr. Jennings' daughter.

"And he's apt to regard my running away with Dorothy when I haven't a
penny as more of an embezzlement than an elopement."

"Fiddle!" exclaimed Mrs. Dick. "I asked you to marry me, and now they're
here and have to spoil it all."

The thought of her father and his disposition suddenly overpowered her
and she put her yellow head on the back of a chair and began to cry.

"I--I can't tell him!" she sobbed. "I wrote to Pat,--why doesn't Pat
tell him? I'm going back to school."