“From the Philippines, where he’s been all the time. Mother got a telegram Saturday from San Francisco. That was something of a jolt too, I expect. You’ll come over for the wedding itself, though, won’t you, on Saturday afternoon--in a horse litter or a palanquin, or something?” I told her I would. In the doorway she paused for a comprehensive glance about the room. “It’s a nice little room, isn’t it,” she said. “And a nice little house. I’ve never been in here before.” She paused a moment, then went on. “The horridest thing in the world, I’m getting to think, is whitewash, and it’s going to be thick over at The Oaks this week. I’m going to be coated with it. Come out looking like a nice little plaster angel. Do you know what I’d like to do? I’d like to poison your nurse, or something, and come down here and take care of you--for the rest of this week.” “And not get married at all?” I asked. “They used to do that by proxy sometimes, didn’t they? I should think that would be a good way to do it. Good-by. I suppose Punch left his bicycle around here somewhere.” I tried, after she’d gone, to make myself believe that there was nothing to this but the modern young girl’s dread of seeming to be the conventional blushing bride, but I couldn’t manage it. Punch’s prediction that there was going to be big trouble before this business was over stuck in my mind like a burr. CHAPTER II SHOAL WATER Punch’s sense of duty condemned him to a rather dull day. He ate a solitary lunch, for his mother hadn’t returned from town, and Judy was apparently making a day of it with his bicycle. He spent several uneventful hours wandering over the house, watching workmen and servants going about their duty, but without detecting anything that looked suspicious. Of course he couldn’t be everywhere at once. The Oaks is an enormous house; old, as such matters are reckoned out in this part of the world. It was built about fifty years ago, of dark red brick with Gothic trimmings in wood, three stories high, and a nervous-looking, high peaked roof on top of that. Structurally it hasn’t been altered very much, save for additional bathrooms, the installation of electric lights and an elaborate system of burglar alarms. The place is a regular fort. One incongruous innovation, namely an elevator, was necessitated by old Mrs. Corbin’s illness. She might, of course, have moved down to rooms on the ground floor, but she wasn’t willing to do that. She said she’d lived in those rooms ever since she came to the house as a bride and she was going to die in them. She’d have found it unendurable, too, no doubt, to give up the possibility of visiting any room in her house; seeing to it that the house-maids did their duty.