"I believe that!" I answered, and stared back at him without blinking. "I guess I wouldn't want the responsibility."
But I had an idea that he meant what he said about the many women, and that Miss Patty knew it as well as I did. She flushed a little, and they went very soon after that. I stood and watched them until they disappeared in the snow, and I felt lonelier than ever, and sad, although certainly he was better than I had expected to find him. He was a man, and not a little cub with a body hardly big enough to carry his forefathers' weaknesses. But he had a cold eye and a warm mouth, and that sort of man is generally a social success and a matrimonial failure.
It wasn't until toward night that I remembered I'd been talking to a real prince and I hadn't once said "your Highness" or "your Excellency" or whatever I should have said. I had said "You!"
I had hardly closed the door after them when it opened again and Mr. Pierce came in. He shut the door and, going over to one of the tables, put a package down on it.
"Here's the stuff you wanted for the spring, Minnie," he announced. "I suppose I can't do anything more than register a protest against it?"
"You needn't bother doing that," I answered, "unless it makes you feel better. Your authority ends at that door. Inside the spring-house I'm in control."
(It's hard to believe, with things as they are, that I once really believed that. But I did. It was three full days later that I learned that I'd been mistaken!)
Well, he sat there and looked at nothing while I heated water in my brass kettle over the fire and dissolved the things against Thoburn's quick eye the next day, and he didn't say anything. He had a gift for keeping quiet, Mr. Pierce had. It got on my nerves after a while.
"Things are doing better," I remarked, stirring up my mixture.
"Yes," he said, without moving.