CHAPTER XV. The Prince, With Apologies

THE PRINCE, WITH APOLOGIES

Tillie brought the supper basket for the shelter-house about six o'clock and sat down for a minute by the fire. She said Mr. Pierce (Carter to her) had started out with a gun about five o'clock. It was foolish, but it made me uneasy.

"They've gone plumb crazy over that Mr. von Inwald," she declared. "It makes me tired. How do they know he's anything but what he says he is? He may be a messenger from the emperor of Austria, and he may be selling flannel chest protectors. Miss Cobb's all set up; she's talking about getting up an entertainment and asking that Miss Summers to recite."

She got up, leaving the basket on the hearth.

"And say," she said, "you ought to see that dog now. It's been soakin' in peroxide all day!"

She went out with the peroxide, but a moment later she opened the door and stuck her head in, nodding toward the basket.

"Say," she said, "the chef's getting fussy about the stuff I'm using in the diet kitchen. You've got to cut it out soon, Minnie. If I was you I'd let him starve."

"What!" I screeched, and grasped the rail of the spring.

"Let him starve!" she repeated.

"Wha--what are you talking about?" I demanded when I got my voice.

She winked at me from the doorway.

"Oh, I'm on all right, Minnie!" she assured me, "although heaven only knows where he puts it all! He's sagged in like a chair with broken springs."

I saw then that she thought I was feeding Senator Biggs on the sly, and I breathed again. But my nerves were nearly gone, and when just then I heard a shot from the direction of the deer park, even Tillie noticed how pale I got.

"I don't know what's come over you, Minnie," she said. "That's only Mr. Carter shooting rabbits. I saw him go out as I started down the path."

I was still nervous when I put on my shawl and picked up the basket. But there was a puddle on the floor and the soup had spilled. There was nothing for it but to go back for more soup, and I got it from the kitchen without the chef seeing me. When I opened the spring-house door again Mr. Pierce was by the fire, and in front of him, where I'd left the basket, lay a dead rabbit. He was sitting there with his chin in his hands looking at the poor thing, and there was no basket in sight.

"Well," I asked, "did you change my basket into a dead rabbit?"

"Basket!" he said, looking up. "What basket?"

I looked everywhere, but the basket was gone, and after a while I decided that Mr. Dick had had an attack of thoughtfulness (or hunger) and had carried it out himself.

And all the time I looked for the basket Mr. Pierce sat with the gun across his knees and stared at the rabbit.

"I'd thank you to take that messy thing out of here," I told him.

"Poor little chap!" he exclaimed. "He was playing in the snow, and I killed him--not because I wanted food or sport, Minnie, but--well, because I had to kill something."

"I hope you don't have those attacks often," I said. He looked at the rabbit and sighed.

"Never in my life!" he answered. "For food or sport, that's different, but--blood-lust!" He got up and put the gun in the corner, and I saw he looked white and miserable.

"I don't like myself to-night, Minnie," he said, trying to smile, "and nobody likes me. I'm going into the garden to eat worms!"

I didn't like to scold him when he was feeling bad anyhow, but business is business. So I asked him how long he thought people would stay if he acted as he had that day. I said that a sanatorium was a place where the man who runs it can't afford to have likes and dislikes; that for my