ts again." Suddenly she turned to her
mother. "I'm afraid you'll find I've made some queer friends, mother."

"What do you mean by 'queer'?"

"People no proper Cardew would care to know." She smiled. "Where's
Ellen? I want to tell her I met somebody she knows out there, the nicest
sort of a boy." She went to the doorway and called lustily: "Ellen!
Ellen!" The rustling of starched skirts answered her from down the
corridor.

"I wish you wouldn't call, dear." Grace looked anxious. "You know how
your grandfather--there's a bell for Ellen."

"What we need around here," said Lily, cheerfully, "is a little more
calling. And if grandfather thinks it is unbefitting the family dignity
he can put cotton in his ears. Come in, Ellen. Ellen, do you know that I
met Willy Cameron in the camp?"

"Willy!" squealed Ellen. "You met Willy? Isn't he a fine boy, Miss
Lily?"

"He's wonderful," said Lily. "I went to the movies with him every
Friday night." She turned to her mother. "You would like him, mother. He
couldn't get into the army. He is a little bit lame. And--" she surveyed
Grace with amused eyes, "you needn't think what you are thinking. He is
tall and thin and not at all good-looking. Is he, Ellen?"

"He is a very fine young man," Ellen said rather stiffly. "He's very
highly thought of in the town I come from. His father was a doctor, and
his buggy used to go around day, and night. When he found they wouldn't
take him as a soldier he was like to break his heart."

"Lame?" Grace repeated, ignoring Ellen.

"Just a little. You forget all about it when you know him. Don't you,
Ellen?"

But at Grace's tone Ellen had remembered. She stiffened, and became
again a housemaid in the Anthony Cardew house, a self-effacing,
rubber-heeled, pink-uniformed lower servant. She glanced at Mrs. Cardew,
whose eyebrows were slightly raised.

"Thank you, miss," she said. And went out, leaving Lily rather chilled
and openly perplexed.

"Well!" she said. Then she glanced at her mother. "I do believe you are
a little shocked, mother, because Ellen and I have a mutual friend
in Mr. William Wallace Cameron! Well, if you want the exact truth, he
hadn't an atom of use for me until he heard about Ellen." She put an arm
around Grace's shoulders. "Brace up, dear," she said, smilingly. "Don't
you cry. I'll be a Cardew bye-and-bye."

"Did you really go to the moving pictures with him?" Grace asked, rather
unhappily. She had never been inside a movi