Having delivered this shot with evident pride, Patty sat back in her chair and waited to see if Charlie would be able to make any reply. She considered that last argument unanswerable. Charlie apparently did not. He observed that Pat's horse, rising thirty and rather fat, could hardly be called the fastest animal that goes. He never was very fast. But he contented himself with that, for Patty had just turned over to him all the ready money that she could raise and was feeling really impoverished in consequence. So Charlie, having got what he came for, took his leave, bidding Pat not to be anxious on his account, for he wasn't going to get smashed up again--he almost forgot to put in the "again"--and he wasn't going to spend much money on machines in the future. They always cost more at first, before you got used to them. With this comforting assurance, at which poor Patty sighed and said that she hoped he was right, Charlie went out cheerfully to sit behind one of the fastest animals that go, and to take the rig, for which Sally would have to pay, back to the livery stable. Nothing in particular happened that winter, except that Dick and Henrietta moved into Miss Patty's house early in February. Patty was getting to be considered--and to consider herself--one of Doctor Sanderson's patients. And the Retreat was filling up and she did not want to give up her comfortable room, with the probable chance that she would be unable to get it again when she came back. In fact, it looked as if anybody had better hold on to what she had at Doctor Sanderson's. So Sally saw but little of Fox that winter. They were both very busy, and Sally had her hands and her head full, with the office and her school, too. But she liked the office in spite of the work which, between you and me, was not very hard. There was a good deal of it, but it was interesting and Sally went home at night, tired and happy and with her head full of schemes. Sometimes Everett was waiting for her. She did not know whether she liked that or not, but there did not seem to be reason enough for sending him away. She did not quite know what her relations were with Everett; friendly, she hoped, no more. For there was a difference between Sally's state of mind now and her state of mind the year before. She was not indifferent now, she was happy and things mattered in a wholesome way. But Sally knew that Fox had not opened the cream-colored house again; not since Henrietta's wedding. He had not even made any preparations to open it. Sally was watching that house, out of the corner of her eye, and she knew. What an old slow poke he was, wasn't he? The winter was gone before she knew it and it was almost Easter. Then, one afternoon, Charlie made his appearance, suddenly and unexpectedly, and went up to see Henrietta almost immediately.