When they had disappeared in the snow we got out of our cramped position and prepared to scurry home. I climbed the fence and looked after them. "Humph!" I said, "I guess that basket isn't for the hungry poor. I'd give a good bit to know—" Then I turned and looked for Miss Patty. She was flat on the snow, crawling between the two lower rails of the fence.
"Have you no shame?" I demanded.
She looked up at me with her head and half her long sealskin coat through the fence.
"None," she said pitifully. "Minnie, I'm stuck perfectly tight!"
"You ought to be left as you are," I said, jerking at her, "for people to come"—jerk—"to-morrow to look at"—jerk. She came through at that, and we lay together in the snow and like to burst a rib laughing.
"You'll never be a princess, Miss Patty," I declared. "You're too lowly minded."
She sat up suddenly and straightened her sealskin cap on her head.
"I wish," she said unpleasantly, "I wish you wouldn't always drag in disagreeable things, Minnie!"
And she was sulky all the way to the house.
Miss Summers came to my room that night as I was putting my hot-water bottle to bed, in a baby-blue silk wrapper with a band of fur around the low neck—Miss Summers, of course, not the hot-water bottle.