ille, and warmer hopes that we would join the missionary
society, they left us.

"Wedge Number One: The poor dear heathen, Sophy!" smiled Alicia.
"The P.D.H. can be a very present help in times of social trouble,
can't he? I shall attend that missionary meeting, and take stock.
Incidentally (For goodness' sake, don't look so scandalized, Sophy
Smith! this is a fight for our lives, so to speak!) incidentally, I
shan't do the P.D.H. any harm. He won't be a bit worse than he was
before, which is promising." She put two fingers before her laughing
eyes, squinted through them, and drawled:

"You lack subtlety, Miss Smith. Cultivate your imagination, my
dear!" in Miss Hopkins's best voice.

Riedriech stuck his grizzled head out at a window, cautiously:

"Fraeulein, she hass gone?" And seeing that the coast was clear,
he added, vehemently: "Cultivate the mindt! Cultivate the
imatchination! _Ach, lieber Gott! Dornroeschen_, cultivate you the
_heart_. It iss not what the woman thinks, but what she loves, what
she feels, which makes of the world a home-place for men und
_kinder_." The good old Jew nodded his head vigorously at the girl,
smiled, and went back to his work. And Schmetz came and finished the
bulb bed by covering it carefully with two thicknesses of
chicken-wire.

That night, just before we went up-stairs, I went into the library
after Freeman Hynds's diary, which we were simply burning to read. I
opened the table drawer in which I had placed it. The drawer was
quite empty. The little flat book was gone.

CHAPTER VI

GLAMOURY

Alicia insisted that we were living in a fairy-story, and had better
enjoy every shining minute while it lasted. But, as I pointed out,
the cost of restoring Hynds House was appallingly real, so real that
it left a big, big hole in the bank-account. It is true that we who
never really had had a home since we were little children, and then
the most modest sort, had gotten such a home as comes to but few.
But--one doesn't get something for nothing!

We had done our part for Hynds House; now Hynds House had to do its
part for us. It had to earn its keep, and ours. We had known that
from the beginning, and Alicia mapped out the entire plan of how
it was to be done; a plan which I at first looked upon as the
fairy-storiest part of the whole thing!

To-night we sat facing each other across the library table, with a
great pile of receipted bills between us, the total of which made