"I might have known it!" she said. "What a fool I've been, Minnie, and
how clever you are under that red thatch of yours! Dicky can not appear
as long as I am here, and Pierce takes his place, and I help to keep the
secret and to play the game! Well, I can appreciate a joke on myself as
well as most people, but--Minnie, Minnie, think of that guilty wretch of
a Dicky Carter shaking in the pantry!"
"I don't know what you are talking about," I said, but she only winked
and went to the door.
"Don't take it too much to heart," she advised. "Too much loyalty is
a vice, not a virtue. And another piece of advice, Minnie--when I find
Dicky Carter, stand from under; something will fall."
They had charades during the rest hour that afternoon, the overweights
headed by the bishop, against the underweights headed by Mr. Moody. They
selected their words from one of Horace Fletcher's books, and as Mr.
Pierce wasn't either over or underweight, they asked him to be referee.
Oh, they were crazy about him by that time. It was "Mr. Carter" here and
"dear Mr. Carter" there, with the women knitting him neckties and the
men coming up to be bullied and asking for more.
And he kept the upper hand, too, once he got it. It was that day, I
think, that he sent Senator Biggs up to make his bed again, and nobody
in the place will ever forget how he made old Mr. Jennings hang his
gymnasium suit up three times before it was done properly. The old man
was mad enough at the time, but inside of twenty minutes he was offering
Mr.
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