n
immense walnut bed, Mrs. Burgoyne, looking through a window that she
had opened upon the lovely panorama of river and woods, said suddenly:

"This must be my room, it was hers. She was the best friend, in one
way, that I ever had--Mrs. Holly. How happy I was here!"

"Here?" Barry echoed.

At his tone she turned, and looked keenly at him, a little smile
playing about her lips. Then her face suddenly brightened.

"Barry, of course!" she exclaimed. "I KNEW I knew you, but the 'Mr.
Valentine' confused me." And facing him radiantly, she demanded, "Who
am I?"

Barry shook his head slowly, his puzzled, smiling eyes on hers. For a
moment they faced each other; then his look cleared as hers had done,
and their hands met as he said boyishly:

"Well, I will be hanged! Jappy Frothingham!"

"Jappy Frothingham!" she echoed joyously. "But I haven't heard that
name for twenty years. And you're the boy whose father was a doctor,
and who helped us build our Indian camp, and who had the frog, and fell
off the roof, and killed the rattlesnake."

"And you're the girl from Washington who could speak French, and who
put that stuff on my freckles and wouldn't let 'em drown the kittens."

"Oh, yes, yes!" she said, and, their hands still joined, they laughed
like happy children together.

Presently, more gravely, she told him a little of herself, of the early
marriage, and the diplomat husband whose career was so cruelly cut
short by years of hopeless invalidism. Then had come her father's
illness, and years of travel with him, and now she and the little girls
were alone. And in return Barry sketched his own life, told her a
little of Hetty, and his unhappy days in New York, and of the boy, and
finally of the Mail. Her absorbed attention followed him from point to
point.

"And you say that this Rogers owns the newspaper?" she asked
thoughtfully, when the Mail was under discussion.

"Rogers owns it; that's the trouble. Nothing goes into it without the
old man's consent." Barry tested the spring of a roller shade, with a
scowl. "Barnes, the assistant editor he had before me, threw up his job
because he wouldn't stand having his stuff cut all to pieces and
changed to suit Rogers' policies," he went on, as Mrs. Burgoyne's eyes
demanded more detail. "And that's what I'll do some day. In the six
years since the old man bought it, the circulation has fallen off about
half; we don't get any 'ads'; we're not paying expenses. It's a crime