t from
you, they're not likely to hear it."

"I haven't mentioned it," Nancy said. "I only told you, because it
seemed rather in your line of work, and I was getting so much mail
about it, I thought it would be wise to have some one look it over."

"I've given up my law practice and Caroline for three days in your
service."

"You've done more than well, Billy, and I'm grateful to you. Of
course, you would have saved me days of nervous wear and tear if it
had only occurred to you to tell me the one simple little thing that
was the essential point of the whole matter. If I had known that I
didn't inherit for two years, I wouldn't have cared _what_ was in that
will."

Billy stared at her feelingly.

"A peculiar sensation always comes over me," he said musingly, "after
I spend several hours uninterruptedly in the society of a woman who is
using her mind in any way. I couldn't explain it to you exactly. It's
a kind of impression that my own brain has begun to disintegrate, and
to--"

"Don't be too hard on yourself, Billy." Nancy soothed him sweetly,--Billy
was not one of the people to whom she habitually allowed full
conversational leeway: "Swear you won't tell Caroline or Betty--or Dick."

"I swear."

Nancy held out her hand to him.

"You're a good boy," she said, "and I appreciate you, which is more
than Caroline does, I'm afraid. Run along and see her now--I don't
need you any more, and you're probably dying to."

Billy bowed over her hand, lingeringly and politely, but once
releasing it, he shook his big frame, and straightening up, drew a
long deep breath of something very like relief.

"With all deference to your delightful sex," he said, "the only
society that I'm dying for at the present moment is that of the old
family bar-keep."

As Billy left her, Nancy turned to her basement window, and stood
looking out at the quaint stone court he had to cross in order to
reach the high gate that guarded the entrance to the marble worker's
establishment, under the shadow of which it was her intention to open
her out-of-door tea-room. She watched him dreamily is he made his way
among the cinerary urns, the busts and statues and bas-reliefs that
were a part of the stock in trade of her incongruous business
associate.

In her investigation of the various sorts and conditions of
restaurants in New York, she characteristically hit upon the garden
restaurant, a commonplace in the down-town table d'hote district, as