ly, and declared herself as more than willing to put
up with such an arrangement. Bertram, it is true, when he heard of
the plan, rebelled, and asserted that what Billy needed was a rest, an
entire rest from care and labor. In fact, what he wanted her to do, he
said, was to gallivant--to gallivant all day long.

"Nonsense!" Billy had laughed, coloring to the tips of her ears.
"Besides, as for the work, Bertram, with just you and me here, and with
all my vast experience now, and Eliza here for several hours every day,
it'll be nothing but play for this little time before we go away. You'll
see!"

"All right, I'll _see_, then," Bertram had nodded meaningly. "But just
make sure that it _is_ play for you!"

"I will," laughed Billy; and there the matter had ended.

Eliza began work the next day, and Billy did indeed soon find herself
"playing" under Bertram's watchful insistence. She resumed her music,
and brought out of exile the unfinished song. With Bertram she took
drives and walks; and every two or three days she went to see Aunt
Hannah and Marie. She was pleasantly busy, too, with plans for her
coming trip; and it was not long before even the remorseful Bertram had
to admit that Billy was looking and appearing quite like her old self.

At the Annex Billy found Calderwell and Arkwright, one day. They greeted
her as if she had just returned from a far country.

"Well, if you aren't the stranger lady," began Calderwell, looking
frankly pleased to see her. "We'd thought of advertising in the daily
press somewhat after this fashion: 'Lost, strayed, or stolen, one
Billy; comrade, good friend, and kind cheerer-up of lonely hearts. Any
information thankfully received by her bereft, sorrowing friends.'"

Billy joined in the laugh that greeted this sally, but Arkwright
noticed that she tried to change the subject from her own affairs to
a discussion of the new song on Alice Greggory's piano. Calderwell,
however, was not to be silenced.

"The last I heard of this elusive Billy," he resumed, with teasing
cheerfulness, "she was running down a certain lost calory that had
slipped away from her husband's breakfast, and--"

Billy wheeled sharply.

"Where did you get hold of that?" she demanded.

"Oh, I didn't," returned the man, defensively. "I never got hold of it
at all. I never even saw the calory--though, for that matter, I don't
think I should know one if I did see it! What we feared was, that, in
hunting the lost ca