went crazy that afternoon. I put salt in Miss Cobb's glass when she always drank the water plain. Once I put the broom in the fire and started to sweep the porch with a fire log Luckily they were busy with their letters and it went unnoticed, the smell of burning straw not rising, so to speak, above the sulphur in the spring. Senator Biggs went from one table to another telling how well he felt since he stopped eating, and trying to coax the other men to starve with him. It's funny how a man with a theory about his stomach isn't happy until he has made some other fellow swallow it. "Well," he said, standing in front of the fire with a glass of water in his hand, "it's worth while to feel like this. My head's as clear as a bell. I don't care to eat; I don't want to eat. The 'fast' is the solution." "Two stages to that solution, Senator," said the bishop; "first, resolution; last, dissolution." Then they all began at once. If you have ever heard twenty people airing their theories on diet you know all about it. One shouts for Horace Fletcher, and another one swears by the scraped-beef treatment, and somebody else never touches a thing but raw eggs and milk, and pretty soon there is a riot of calories and carbohydrates. It always ends the same way: the man with the loudest voice wins, and the defeated ones limp over to the spring and tell their theories to me. They know I'm being paid to listen. On this particular afternoon the bishop stopped the riot by rising and holding up his hand. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "let us not be rancorous. If each of us has a theory, and that theory works out to his satisfaction, then--why are we all here?" "Merely to tell one another the good news!" Mr. Jennings said sourly from his corner. Honest, it was funny. If some folks were healthy they'd be lonesome. But when things had got quiet--except Mr. Moody dropping nickels into the slot-machine--I happened to look over at Miss Patty, and I saw there was something wrong. She had a letter open in her lap not one of the blue ones with the black and gold seal that everyone in the house knew came from the prince but a white one, and she was staring at it as if she'd seen a ghost. CHAPTER V WANTED--AN OWNER I have never reproached Miss Patty, but if she had only given me the letter to read or
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