Mrs. Dick looked at the horseman in utter disappointment.
"You won't come? Maybe you mean my house ain't good enough?"
Napoleon was somewhat excited by prospects of again beholding Elsa, of whose absence he was wholly unaware.
"We won't go, neither!" he declared. "Doggone you, Van, you know we won't go without the skipper, and you're shovin' us right out of heaven!"
Gettysburg added: "I don't want to say nuthin', but my stomach will sure be the seat of anarchy if it has to git cheated out of goin' down to Mrs. Dick's."
Van was about to reply to them all. He had paused to frame his answer artfully, eager as he was to foster the comfort of his three old partners, but wholly unwilling to accept from either Mrs. Dick or Algernon the slightest hint of aid.
"I admit that a man's reach should be above the other fellow's grasp, and all that," he started, "but here's the point——"
He was interrupted suddenly. A man, running breathlessly up the slope and waving his hat in frantic gestures, began to shout as he came.
"Mrs. Dick! Mrs. Dick!" he cried at the top of his voice. "Help! help! You've got to come!"
Mrs. Dick leaped quickly to her feet to face the oncoming man. It was old Billy Stitts. He had come from Beth.