e hall. "Or worse. Come away, Fatima!"

"Bob," said Sally, regarding him from the top of the steps, her cheeks
brightly flushed, her eyes alight with interest, "I simply have to know
what's beyond this door."

"What are you expecting to find there, Sis? Trunks full of gold?
Family papers, leaving all the Maxwell Lane estate to the Lanes of
Henley Street?"

She shook her head with a laughing challenge. "Wait till I get a
locksmith here!" she said.

"I'll wait," and Bob sat composedly down on the bottom step, grinning up
at his excited sister. "Going to get him out by wireless?"

CHAPTER II

EVERYBODY EXPLORES

Alighting from her mother's carriage in front of the Winona apartments in
Henley Street, Josephine Burnside dismissed her coachman and hurried
eagerly into the florid vestibule.

"I don't see how Sally endures this sort of thing," she thought, for the
hundredth time since the Lane house, near her own in Grosvenor Place, had
been sold. The door-latch clicked promptly in answer to her ring, and at
the top of the third flight she met Sally.

"I was sure it was you! I'm so glad! I'm all alone," was Sally's joyful
welcome; and the next minute Josephine found herself inside the small
passage, her outer garments being forcibly removed, and herself borne
into the little living-room and established in Uncle Timothy's reading
chair, which was the most comfortable one in the place.

"Sewing--as usual? What are you making now? Something lovely out of
nothing at all, I suppose?"

"Of course. It's a convenient accomplishment. You didn't know that four
and a half yards of Swiss muslin would make a whole frock, did you? Well,
it will--under some conditions." And Sally proudly held up the work of
her hands, a nearly finished product at which her friend, attired at the
moment in some fifteen yards of silk, stared in amazement.

"Sally Lunn! You didn't--you couldn't! It's not skimpy in the least. You
must have pieced out with something else. But where?"

"The remains of my old one, re-enforced underneath, and used where the
least wear will come on it. It's not an exact match, but I don't think it
will show."

"Show! Not a bit. But I thought putting old and new wash goods together
wouldn't do."

"I've shrunk the new, and, as I told you, re-enforced the old with some
very thin, cheap lawn. I shall wash it myself--with the ends of my
fingers, and my eyes looking the other way. Find the old parts!"

Thus chal