am, disapprovingly. "We hadn't considered it
a subject for exultation."

"What? Oh, I didn't mean that! That is--" she stopped helplessly.

"Oh, never mind about trying to explain," interposed Bertram. "I fancy
the remedy would be worse than the disease, in this case."

"Nonsense! I only meant that I like to be missed--sometimes," retorted
Billy, a little nettled.

"And you rejoice then to have me mope, Cyril play dirges, and Will
wander mournfully about the house with Spunkie in his arms! You should
have seen William. If his forlornness did not bring tears to your eyes,
the grace of the pink bow that lopped behind Spunkie's left ear would
surely have brought a copious flow."

Billy laughed, but her eyes grew tender.

"Did Uncle William do--that?" she asked.

"He did--and he did more. Pete told me after a time that you had
not left one thing in the house, anywhere; but one day, over behind
William's most treasured Lowestoft, I found a small shell hairpin, and
a flat brown silk button that I recognized as coming from one of your
dresses."

"Oh!" said Billy, softly. "Dear Uncle William--and how good he was to
me!"

CHAPTER XXIV

CYRIL, THE ENIGMA

Perhaps it was because Billy saw so little of Cyril that it was Cyril
whom she wished particularly to see. William, Bertram, Calderwell--all
her other friends came frequently to the little house on the hill, Billy
told herself; only Cyril held aloof--and it was Cyril that she wanted.

Billy said that it was his music; that she wanted to hear him play, and
that she wanted him to hear her. She felt grieved and chagrined. Not
once since she had come had he seemed interested--really interested in
her music. He had asked her, it is true, in a perfunctory way what
she had done, and who her teachers had been. But all the while she was
answering she had felt that he was not listening; that he did not care.
And she cared so much! She knew now that all her practising through
the long hard months of study, had been for Cyril. Every scale had been
smoothed for his ears, and every phrase had been interpreted with his
approbation in view. Across the wide waste of waters his face had shone
like a star of promise, beckoning her on and on to heights unknown...
And now she was here in Boston, but she could not even play the
scale, nor interpret the phrase for the ear to which they had been so
laboriously attuned; and Cyril's face, in the flesh, was no beckoning
star of promi