these days--your new
mistress. And such a mistress! Never did cat or house have a better!

"Just think; for the first time in years this old place is to know the
touch of a woman's hand--and that's what it hasn't known for almost
twenty years, except for those few short months six years ago when
a dark-eyed girl and a little gray kitten (that was Spunk, your
predecessor, you know) blew in and blew out again before we scarcely
knew they were here. That girl was Miss Billy, and she was a dear then,
just as she is now, only now she's coming here to stay. She's coming
home, Spunkie; and she'll make it a home for you, for me, and for all of
us. Up to now, you know, it hasn't really been a home, for years--just
us men, so. It'll be very different, Spunkie, as you'll soon find out.
Now mind, madam! We must show that we appreciate all this: no tempers,
no tantrums, no showing of claws, no leaving our coats--either yours or
mine--on the drawing-room chairs, no tracking in of mud on clean rugs
and floors! For we're going to have a home, Spunkie--a home!"

At Hillside, Aunt Hannah was, indeed, helping Rosa to put the house to
rights, as Marie had said. She was crying, too, over a glove she had
found on Billy's piano; but she was crying over something else, also.
Not only had she lost Billy, but she had lost her home.

To be sure, nothing had been said during that nightmare of a week of
hurry and confusion about Aunt Hannah's future; but Aunt Hannah knew
very well how it must be. This dear little house on the side of Corey
Hill was Billy's home, and Billy would not need it any longer. It
would be sold, of course; and she, Aunt Hannah, would go back to a
"second-story front" and loneliness in some Back Bay boarding-house; and
a second story front and loneliness would not be easy now, after these
years of home--and Billy.

No wonder, indeed, that Aunt Hannah sat crying and patting the little
white glove in her hand. No wonder, too, that--being Aunt Hannah--she
reached for the shawl near by and put it on, shiveringly. Even July,
to-night, was cold--to Aunt Hannah.

In yet another home that evening was the wedding of Billy Neilson and
Bertram Henshaw uppermost in thought and speech. In a certain little
South-End flat where, in two rented rooms, lived Alice Greggory and
her crippled mother, Alice was talking to Mr. M. J. Arkwright, commonly
known to his friends as "Mary Jane," owing to the mystery in which he
had for so long shrou