ame. At
the same time she also kept watch for the name of Philip. She remembered
she had read some lines one time about "Philip my King."

As she pored over the poems in the dim light, for only the shaded lamp
on the central table was burning, she heard steps on the porch outside.
The rain had stopped early in the afternoon, and the porches had dried
so that the hammocks and chairs could be put out again. Now voices
sounded just outside the window where she sat, and the creaking of a
screw in the post told that some one was sitting in the hammock.
Evidently it was Lloyd, for Phil's voice sounded nearer the window. He
had seated himself in the armchair that always stood in that niche, and
was tuning a guitar. As soon as it was keyed up to his satisfaction, he
began thrumming on it, a sort of running accompaniment to their
conversation.

It did not occur to Mary that she was eavesdropping, for they were
talking of impersonal things, just the trifles of the hour; and she
caught only a word now and then as she scanned the story of Enoch Arden.
The name Philip, in it, had arrested her attention.

"I think the maid of honor ought to wear something blue as well as the
bride," remarked Phil.

"_Why?_" asked Lloyd.

There was such a long pause that Mary looked up, wondering why he did
not answer.

"_Why?_" asked Lloyd again.

Phil thrummed on a moment longer, and then began playing in a soft minor
key, and his answer, when it finally came, seemed at first to have no
connection with what he had been talking about.

"Do you remember when we were in Arizona, the picnic we had at
Hole-in-the-rock, and the story that that old Norwegian told about
Alaka, the gambling god, who lost his string of precious turquoises and
even his eyes?"

"Yes."

Mary looked up from her book, listening alertly. The mystery of years
was about to be explained.

"Well, do you remember a conversation you had with Joyce about it
afterward, in which you called the turquoise the 'friendship stone,'
because it was true blue? And you said it was a pity that some people
you knew, not a thousand miles away, couldn't go to the School of the
Bees, and learn that line from Watts about Satan finding mischief for
idle hands to do. And Joyce said yes, it was too bad for a fine fellow
to get into trouble just because he was a drone, and had no ambition to
make anything of himself; that if Alaka had gone to the School of the
Bees he wouldn't have lost his ey