metimes, if we find a place that's secluded enough, a little
glen or a grove that screens off the road, we stay there for several
days."

"But what do you do?"

"We all do the things we like best. Richard reads and takes long walks
or fishes, if there is a stream. I clean the van from top to bottom and
polish everything up and bake a cake in the little oven. Then I darn all
the stockings and mend the clothes."

Billie laughed.

"You're not a Gypsy," she said, "if you are a black-eyed wanderer. They
never mend or clean anything. But what does Miss Swinnerton like to do?
Is she fond of housework, too?"

"Amy? No, not specially. She sketches and paints in water colors, and
botanizes, and looks for bits of stones and rocks which she examines
through a glass, and translates French and generally potters around.
She's always busy. She can do anything from making an omelette to
painting a picture."

Billie turned her eyes half wistfully toward the plump brown-haired Amy
Swinnerton. She felt suddenly very inefficient and worthless.

"I can't do anything," she said, frowning. "I'm ashamed of myself."

"You can run a motor car and keep it in order," answered the new friend.
"I never knew another girl who could."

"That's ground into me by experience. But I hate sewing. I'm not a good
cook and I can't draw or paint or play the piano. We met a girl this
summer who has been brought up in a cabin on the mountain and has never
been to school in her life, who knows a lot more than I do."

Billie told what little she knew of the strange history of Phoebe.

"It would make a wonderful story," observed Maggie. "I should like to
put it into a book."

"Do you write, too?" asked Billie eagerly.

Maggie blinked her dark, bright eyes.

"When you see my name appear in book reviews and magazines and things,
then you'll know I write," she replied.

This conversation occurred the next morning at breakfast. Billie had
risen at dawn and repaired the "Comet" and the motor party was soon now
to start on its homeward journey.

Richard Hook presently joined his sister and Billie. Sitting
cross-legged on the ground at their feet, he munched a bacon sandwich
and sipped black coffee from a tin cup. He reminded Billie of one of
Shakespeare's wise fools. All he lacked were the cap and bells. His
whimsical, humorous eyes were rather far apart; his dark hair, cropped
close, stood up straight over his forehead. His nose was distinguished
in s