maybe a widow who used to sit down-stairs,
or a professor who has seen better days. Really to know that line,
you should see it for yourself, Miss Neilson," smiled Arkwright, as
he reluctantly rose to go. "Some Friday, however, before you take your
seat, just glance up at that packed top balcony and judge by the
faces you see there whether their owners think they're getting their
twenty-five-cents' worth, or not."

"I will," nodded Billy, with a smile; but the smile came from her lips
only, not her eyes: Billy was wishing, at that moment, that she owned
the whole of Symphony Hall--to give away. But that was like Billy. When
she was seven years old she had proposed to her Aunt Ella that they take
all the thirty-five orphans from the Hampden Falls Orphan Asylum to live
with them, so that little Sallie Cook and the other orphans might have
ice cream every day, if they wanted it. Since then Billy had always been
trying--in a way--to give ice cream to some one who wanted it.

Arkwright was almost at the door when he turned abruptly. His face was
an abashed red. From his pocket he had taken a small folded paper.

"Do you suppose--in this--you might find--that melody?" he stammered in
a low voice. The next moment he was gone, having left in Billy's fingers
a paper upon which was written in a clear-cut, masculine hand six
four-line stanzas.

Billy read them at once, hurriedly, then more carefully.

"Why, they're beautiful," she breathed, "just beautiful! Where did he
get them, I wonder? It's a love song--and such a pretty one! I believe
there _is_ a melody in it," she exulted, pausing to hum a line or
two. "There is--I know there is; and I'll write it--for Bertram," she
finished, crossing joyously to the piano.

Half-way down Corey Hill at that moment, Arkwright was buffeting
the wind and snow. He, too, was thinking joyously of those
stanzas--joyously, yet at the same time fearfully. Arkwright himself had
written those lines--though not for Bertram.

CHAPTER XV. "MR. BILLY" AND "MISS MARY JANE"

On the fourteenth of December Billy came down-stairs alert, interested,
and happy. She had received a dear letter from Bertram (mailed on the
way to New York), the sun was shining, and her fingers were fairly
tingling to put on paper the little melody that was now surging
riotously through her brain. Emphatically, the restlessness of the day
before was gone now. Once more Billy's "clock" had "begun to tick."

After br