ed around the room looking at the various specimen's of Joyce's
handicraft pinned about on the walls. One of the first pauses was before
a sketch of Lloyd, done from memory, a little wash drawing of her. Mary,
standing in the doorway, heard Phil say, "Tell me about her, Miss Betty.
She writes so seldom that I can only imagine her conquests."

For a moment Mary watched him, as he studied the sketch intently. Then
she turned away to the kitchenette to help Joyce, thinking how lovely it
must be to have a handsome man like that bend over your picture so
adoringly, and speak of you in such a fashion.

It was a merry little dinner party, and afterwards it was almost like
old times at the Wigwam, for Phil insisted on helping wipe the dishes,
and was so boyish and jolly with his teasing reminiscences that she
almost forgot her new awe of him. But afterward when they sat around the
woodfire in the studio ("a piece of Henry's much enjoyed extravagance,"
Joyce explained, "and only lighted on gala occasions like this") they
were suddenly all grown up and serious again. Joyce talked about her
work, and the friends she had made among editors and illustrators, and
ambitious workaday people whose acquaintance was both a delight and an
inspiration. It was Henrietta who brought them to the studio, along with
the Persian rugs and the "old masters," and Joyce could never get done
being thankful that she had found such a friend in the beginning of her
career.

Phil told of his work too, and his travels, and in the friendly shadows
cast by the flickering firelight talked intimately of his plans and
ambitions, and what he hoped ultimately to achieve.

Betty confessed shyly some of her hopes and dreams, warranted now, by
the success of several short flights in essay writing and verse, and
then Phil said laughingly, "Do you remember what Mary's dearest wish
used to be? How we roared the day she gravely informed us that it was
her highest ambition to be 'the toast of two continents,' Is it still
that, Mary?"

"No," she answered, laughing with the rest, but blushing furiously. "I
had just been reading the biography of a great Baltimore belle who was
called that, and it appealed to me as the most desirable thing on earth
to be honoured with such a title. But that was away back in the dark
ages. Of course I wouldn't wish such a silly thing now."

"But aren't you going to tell us what _is_ your greatest ambition?"
persisted Phil. "We have all