Well, I sat down again and explained patiently that it would get out
among the servants and cause a scandal, and that even if it didn't I
wasn't going to have any more deception: I had enough already. And after
a while they saw it as I did, and agreed to wait and see Miss Patty
before they decided. They wanted to have her wakened at once, but I
refused, although I agreed to bring her out first thing in the morning.

"But you can't stay here," I said. "There'll be Miss Cobb at nine
o'clock, and the man comes to light the fire at eight."

"We could go to the old shelter-house on the golf links," suggested Mr.
Dick, looking me square in the eye. (I took the hint, and Mrs. Dicky
never knew he had been hidden there before.)

"Nobody ever goes near it in winter." So I put on my slippers again and
we started through the snow across the golf links, Mr. Dick carrying a
bundle of firewood, and I leading the way with my lantern. 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.

"I wish to heaven I'd wake up and find all THIS a dream," I called back
over my shoulder. But they were busy with costumes and getting some
folks they knew from town to take the different parts and they never