ed with the stage until three years had
passed. It has been only two since Polly's escapade, and it seems to me
that nothing could so awaken a girl's interest as being made the
companion and friend of a famous woman. I thought Mrs. Wharton had
better judgment. Polly had almost forgotten the whole business!"

As she shook her head Meg Everett's face wore a slightly puzzled look.
For she was wondering at the instant if it could be possible that Billy
had any special right to his concern in Polly O'Neill's proceedings.
Mollie O'Neill was her dearest friend and for several years she knew
Mollie and Billy had been apparently devoted to each other. Yet she
would have been almost sure to have guessed had their old affection
developed into something deeper. Moreover, Mollie was only nineteen and
Mrs. Wharton would have insisted upon their waiting before agreeing to
an engagement between them.

"Oh, I don't think it worth while for you and Mollie to worry over
Polly," Meg returned, even in the midst of her meditations, which is a
fortunate faculty one has sometimes of being able to think of one thing
and speak of another at the same instant. "Miss Adams is going away in a
few days, I believe, and though she has invited Polly to be her guest
and travel with her in Europe this summer, Mrs. Wharton has positively
refused to agree to it. I can't help being sorry for Polly, somehow, for
think what it would mean to see Esther and Betty again! Two years has
seemed a dreadfully long time to me without the Princess; I only wish
that there was a chance for me to go abroad this summer."

And in the midst of her own wave of the spring "Wanderlust," which is
aroused each year in the hearts of the young and the old alike, the girl
had a moment of unconsciousness of her companion's nearness and of the
manner in which he had received her news. The next instant he had
lifted his hat and with a few muttered words of apology for his haste,
had walked off with his shoulders squarer than ever and his head more
splendidly erect.

Meg's eyes followed him with admiration. "I hope you may look like Billy
Webster some day, Horace," she said to the small boy at her side, who
was now all long legs and arms and tousled hair. "But I don't know that
I want you to be too much like him. Billy is the old-fashioned type of
man, I think--honest and brave and kind. But he does not understand in
the least that the world has changed for women and that some of us m