"We're not dead yet," he replied from the door, "and maybe we'll need you before the day's over. If anybody can sail the old bark to shore, you can do it, Minnie. You've been steering it for years. The old doctor was no navigator, and you and I know it."
It was blowing a blizzard by that time, and Miss Patty was the only one who came out to the spring-house until after three o'clock. She shook the snow off her furs and stood by the fire, looking at me and not saying anything for fully a minute.
"Well," she said finally, "aren't you ashamed of yourself?"
"Why?" I asked, and swallowed hard.
"To be in all this trouble and not let me know. I've just this minute heard about it. Can't we get the police?"
"Mr. Van Alstyne is trying," I said, "but I don't hope much. Like as not Mr. Dick will turn up tomorrow and say his calendar was a day slow."
I gave her a glass of water, and I noticed when she took it how pale she was. But she held it up and smiled over it at me.
"Here's to everything turning out better than we expect!" she said, and made a face as she drank the water. I thought that she was thinking of her own troubles as well as mine, for she put down the glass and stood looking at her engagement ring, a square red ruby in an old-fashioned setting. It was a very large ruby, but I've seen showier rings.
"There isn't anything wrong, Miss Patty, is there?" I asked, and she dropped her hand and looked at me.
"Oh, no," she said. "That is, nothing much, Minnie. Father is—I think he's rather ridiculous about some things, but I dare say he'll come around. I don't mind his fussing with me, but—if it should get in the papers, Minnie! A breath of unpleasant notoriety now would be fatal!"