"They?" she said, with her mouth open.

But I didn't explain any more. I had found Tillie about a year before,
frying sausages at the railroad station, and made her diet cook at
the sanatorium. Mrs. Wiggins hadn't wanted her, but, as I told the old
doctor at the time, we needed somebody in the kitchen to keep an eye on
things for us. It was through Tillie that we discovered that the help
were having egg-nog twice a day, with eggs as scarce as hens' teeth, and
the pharmacy clerk putting in a requisition for more whisky every week.

Well, I scribbled a note to Mr. Van Alstyne, telling what had happened,
and put it under his door, and then I met Miss Patty in the hall by the
billiard room and I gave her some coffee from the basket, in the sun
parlor. It was still dark, although it was nearly eight o'clock, and
nobody saw us go out together. Just as we left I heard the chef in the
kitchen bawling out that he'd murder whoever put the kettle against the
bell, and Tillie saying it must have dropped off the hook and landed
there.

We went to the spring-house first, to avoid suspicion, and then across
back of the deer park to the shelter-house. It was still snowing, but
not so much, and the tracks we had made early in the morning were still
there, mine off to one side alone, and the others close together and
side by side. There was a whole history in those snow tracks, mine alone
and kind of offish, and the others cuddling together. It made me lonely
to look at them.

I remember wishing I'd taught school, as I was educated to; woman wasn't
made to live alone, and most school-teachers get married.