near him then, for the old aunt whom she
visited lived in a big stone house with towers, on another hill, in
plain sight from the boy's home."

"Towers like those--where the Lady of the Roses lives?" asked David.

"Eh? What? Oh--er--yes," murmured Mr. Jack. "We'll say the towers were
something like those over there." He paused, then went on musingly:
"The girl used to signal, sometimes, from one of the tower windows. One
wave of the handkerchief meant, 'I'm coming, over'; two waves, with a
little pause between, meant, 'You are to come over here.' So the boy
used to wait always, after that first wave to see if another followed;
so that he might know whether he were to be host or guest that day. The
waves always came at eight o'clock in the morning, and very eagerly the
boy used to watch for them all through the summer when the girl was
there."

"Did they always come, every morning?" Asked Jill.

"No; sometimes the girl had other things to do. Her aunt would want her
to go somewhere with her, or other cousins were expected whom the girl
must entertain; and she knew the boy did not like other guests to be
there when he was, so she never asked him to come over at such times.
On such occasions she did sometimes run up to the tower at eight
o'clock and wave three times, and that meant, 'Dead Day.' So the boy,
after all, never drew a real breath of relief until he made sure that
no dreaded third wave was to follow the one or the two."

"Seems to me," observed David, "that all this was sort of one-sided.
Didn't the boy say anything?"

"Oh, yes," smiled Mr. Jack. "But the boy did not have any tower to wave
from, you must remember. He had only the little piazza on his tiny bit
of a house. But he rigged up a pole, and he asked his mother to make
him two little flags, a red and a blue one. The red meant 'All right';
and the blue meant 'Got to work'; and these he used to run up on his
pole in answer to her waving 'I'm coming over,' or 'You are to come
over here.' So, you see, occasionally it was the boy who had to bring
the 'Dead Day,' as there were times when he had to work. And, by the
way, perhaps you would be interested to know that after a while he
thought up a third flag to answer her three waves. He found an old
black silk handkerchief of his father's, and he made that into a flag.
He told the girl it meant 'I'm heartbroken,' and he said it was a sign
of the deepest mourning. The girl laughed and tipped her head saucil