color to her face. It is one thing to
refuse a home, and quite another to have a home refused you.

"Oh! O-h-h, Aunt Hannah," cried Billy, turning very red in her turn.
"Please, _please_ don't look like that. I didn't mean it that way. I do
want you, dear, only--I want you somewhere else more. I want you--here."

"Here!" Aunt Hannah looked relieved, but unconvinced.

"Yes. Don't you like it here?"

"Like it! Why, I love it, dear. You know I do. But you don't need this
house now, Billy."

"Oh, yes, I do," retorted Billy, airily. "I'm going to keep it up, and I
want you here.

"Fiddlededee, Billy! As if I'd let you keep up this house just for me,"
scorned Aunt Hannah.

"'Tisn't just for you. It's for--for lots of folks."

"My grief and conscience, Billy! What are you talking about?"

Billy laughed, and settled herself more comfortably on the hassock at
Aunt Hannah's feet.

"Well, I'll tell you. Just now I want it for Tommy Dunn, and the
Greggorys if I can get them, and maybe one or two others. There'll
always be somebody. You see, I had thought I'd have them at the Strata."

"Tommy Dunn--at the Strata!"

Billy laughed again ruefully.

"O dear! You sound just like Bertram," she pouted. "He didn't want
Tommy, either, nor any of the rest of them."

"The rest of them!"

"Well, I could have had a lot more, you know, the Strata is so big,
especially now that Cyril has gone, and left all those empty rooms.
_I_ got real enthusiastic, but Bertram didn't. He just laughed and said
'nonsense!' until he found I was really in earnest; then he--well, he
said 'nonsense,' then, too--only he didn't laugh," finished Billy, with
a sigh.

Aunt Hannah regarded her with fond, though slightly exasperated eyes.

"Billy, you are, indeed, a most extraordinary young woman--at times.
Surely, with you, a body never knows what to expect--except the
unexpected."

"Why, Aunt Hannah!--and from you, too!" reproached Billy, mischievously;
but Aunt Hannah had yet more to say.

"Of course Bertram thought it was nonsense. The idea of you, a bride,
filling up your house with--with people like that! Tommy Dunn, indeed!"

"Oh, Bertram said he liked Tommy all right," sighed Billy; "but he said
that that didn't mean he wanted him for three meals a day. One would
think poor Tommy was a breakfast food! So that is when I thought of
keeping up this house, you see, and that's why I want you here--to take
charge of it. And you'll do that--for me