"Mumps! Oh, my aunt!" he exclaimed, and fell to laughing. He was still laughing when he got to the door.

"Mumps!" he repeated, with his hand on the knob. "Minnie, the old place will be under the hammer in three weeks, and if you know what's good for you, you'll sign in under the new management while there's a vacancy. You've been the whole show here for so long that it will be hard for you to line up in the back row of the chorus."

"If I were you," I said, looking him straight in the eye, "I wouldn't pick out any new carpets yet, Mr. Thoburn. I promised the old doctor I'd help Mr. Dick, and I will."

"So you're actually going to fight it out," he said, grinning. "Well, the odds are in your favor. You are two to my one."

"I think it's pretty even," I retorted. "We will be hindered, so to speak, by having certain principles of honor and honesty. You have no handicap."

He tried to think of a retort, and not finding one he slammed out of the spring-house in a rage.

Mr. Van Alstyne and his wife came in that same day, just before dinner, and we played three-handed bridge for half an hour. As I've said, they'd been on their honeymoon, and they were both sulky at having to stay at the Springs. It was particularly hard on Mrs. Van Alstyne, because, with seven trunks of trousseau with her, she had to put on black. But she used to shut herself up in her room in the evenings and deck out for Mr. Sam in her best things. We found it out one evening when Mrs. Biggs set fire to her bureau cover with her alcohol curling-iron heater, and Mrs. Sam, who had been going around in a black crepe dress all day, rushed out in pink satin with crystal trimming, and slippers with cut-glass heels.

After the first rubber Mrs. Van Alstyne threw her cards on the floor and said another day like this would finish her.

"Surely Dick is able to come now," she said, like a peevish child. "Didn't he say the swelling was all gone?"

"Do you expect me to pick up those cards?" Mr. Sam asked angrily, looking at her.

Mrs. Sam yawned and looked up at him.

"Of course I do," she answered. "If it wasn't for you I'd not have stayed a moment after the funeral. Isn't it bad enough to have seven trunks full of clothes I've never worn, and to have to put on poky old black, without 

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