tty room!"

"I'm glad you like it."

"Indeed I do; I like it ever so much. I shall stay here lots, I know."

"Oh, you--will!" For once even Bertram's ready tongue failed to find
fitting response.

"Yes. Now paint. I want to see you. Aunt Hannah has gone out anyway, and
I'm lonesome. I think I'll stay."

"But I can't--that is, I'm not used to spectators."

"Of course you aren't, you poor old lonesomeness! But it isn't going to
be that way, any more, you know, now that I've come. I sha'n't let you
be lonesome."

"I could swear to that," declared the man, with sudden fervor; and for
Billy's peace of mind it was just as well, perhaps, that she did not
know the exact source of that fervency.

"Now paint," commanded Billy again.

Because he did not know what else to do, Bertram picked up a brush; but
he did not paint. The first stroke of his brush against the canvas was
to Spunk a challenge; and Spunk never refused a challenge. With a bound
he was on Bertram's knee, gleeful paw outstretched, batting at the end
of the brush.

"Tut, tut--no, no--naughty Spunk! Say, but wasn't that cute?" chuckled
Billy. "Do it again!"

The artist gave an exasperated sigh.

"My dear girl," he protested, "cruel as it may seem to you, this picture
is not a kindergarten game for the edification of small cats. I must
politely ask Spunk to desist."

"But he won't!" laughed Billy. "Never mind; we will take it some day
when he's asleep. Let's not paint any more, anyhow. I've come to see
your rooms." And she sprang blithely to her feet. "Dear, dear, what a
lot of faces!--and all girls, too! How funny! Why don't you paint other
things? Still, they are rather nice."

"Thank you," accepted Bertram; dryly.

Bertram did not paint any more that afternoon. Billy found much to
interest her, and she asked numberless questions. She was greatly
excited when she understood the full significance of the omnipresent
"Face of a Girl"; and she graciously offered to pose herself for the
artist. She spent, indeed, quite half an hour turning her head from side
to side, and demanding "Now how's that?--and that?" Tiring at last of
this, she suggested Spunk as a substitute, remarking that, after all,
cats--pretty cats like Spunk--were even nicer to paint than girls.

She rescued Spunk then from the paint-box where he had been holding high
carnival with Bertram's tubes of paint, and demanded if Bertram ever saw
a more delightful, more entrancing, more alto