or till to-morrow?"

"After dinner! To-morrow!" Billy's eyes blazed anew. "Why, Bertram
Henshaw, do you think I'd leave that dear man even one minute longer,
if I could help it, with a notion in his blessed old head that we didn't
_want_ him?"

"But you said a little while ago you had a headache, dear," still
objected Bertram. "If you'd just eat your dinner!"

"Dinner!" choked Billy. "I wonder if you think I could eat any dinner
with Uncle William turned out of his home! I'm going to find Uncle
William." And she stumbled blindly toward the door.

Bertram reached for his hat. He threw a despairing glance into Pete's
eyes.

"We'll be back--when we can," he said, with a frown.

"Yes, sir," answered Pete, respectfully. Then, as if impelled by some
hidden force, he touched his master's arm. "It was that way she looked,
sir, when she came to _you_--that night last July--with her eyes all
shining," he whispered.

A tender smile curved Bertram's lips. The frown vanished from his face.

"Bless you, Pete--and bless her, too!" he whispered back. The next
moment he had hurried after his wife.

The house that bore the number Pete had given proved to have a
pretentious doorway, and a landlady who, in response to the summons of
the neat maid, appeared with a most impressive rustle of black silk and
jet bugles.

No, Mr. William Henshaw was not in his rooms. In fact, he was very
seldom there. His business, she believed, called him to State Street
through the day. Outside of that, she had been told, he spent much time
sitting on a bench in the Common. Doubtless, if they cared to search,
they could find him there now.

"A bench in the Common, indeed!" stormed Billy, as she and Bertram
hurried down the wide stone steps. "Uncle William--on a bench!"

"But surely now, dear," ventured her husband, "you'll come home and get
your dinner!"

Billy turned indignantly.

"And leave Uncle William on a bench in the Common? Indeed, no! Why,
Bertram, you wouldn't, either," she cried, as she turned resolutely
toward one of the entrances to the Common.

And Bertram, with the "eyes all shining" still before him, could only
murmur: "No, of course not, dear!" and follow obediently where she led.

Under ordinary circumstances it would have been a delightful hour for a
walk. The sun had almost set, and the shadows lay long across the grass.
The air was cool and unusually bracing for a day so early in September.
But all this was lost on Be