gnored
them; and he expected that now she, too, would ignore them. As if she
could!" If you would tend to your husband and your home a little more,
and go gallivanting off with Calderwell and Arkwright and Alice Greggory
a little less--" Oh, if only she could, indeed,--forget!

When Billy went up-stairs that night she ran across her "Talk to Young
Wives" in her desk. With a half-stifled cry she thrust it far back out
of sight.

"I hate you, I hate you--with all your old talk about 'brushing up
against outside interests'!" she whispered fiercely. "Well, I've
'brushed'--and now see what I've got for it!"

Later, however, after Bertram was asleep, Billy crept out of bed and
got the book. Under the carefully shaded lamp in the adjoining room she
turned the pages softly till she came to the sentence: "Perhaps it would
be hard to find a more utterly unreasonable, irritable, irresponsible
creature than a hungry man." With a long sigh she began to read; and not
until some minutes later did she close the book, turn off the light, and
steal back to bed.

During the next three days, until after the funeral at the shabby little
South Boston house, Eliza spent only about half of each day at the
Strata. This, much to her distress, left many of the household tasks for
her young mistress to perform. Billy, however, attacked each new duty
with a feverish eagerness that seemed to make the performance of it
very like some glad penance done for past misdeeds. And when--on the
day after they had laid the old servant in his last resting place--a
despairing message came from Eliza to the effect that now her mother was
very ill, and would need her care, Billy promptly told Eliza to stay as
long as was necessary; that they could get along all right without her.

"But, Billy, what _are_ we going to do?" Bertram demanded, when he heard
the news. "We must have somebody!"

"_I'm_ going to do it."

"Nonsense! As if you could!" scoffed Bertram.

Billy lifted her chin.

"Couldn't I, indeed," she retorted. "Do you realize, young man, how
much I've done the last three days? How about those muffins you had this
morning for breakfast, and that cake last night? And didn't you yourself
say that you never ate a better pudding than that date puff yesterday
noon?"

Bertram laughed and shrugged his shoulders.

"My dear love, I'm not questioning your _ability_ to do it," he soothed
quickly. "Still," he added, with a whimsical smile, "I must remind