jorie Schuyler; moreover--a thrush sings.

"Now tell me," said Marjorie Schuyler, "where have you been all these
weeks?"

Patsy considered. "Well--I've been taking up hospital training."

"Oh, how splendid! Are you going over with the new Red Cross supply?"

Patsy shook her head. "You see, they only kept me until they had
demonstrated all they knew about lung disorders--and fresh-air
treatment, and then they dismissed me. I'm fearsome they were after
finding out I hadn't the making of a nurse."

"That's too bad! What are you going to do now?"

An amused little smile twitched at the corners of Patsy's mouth; it
acted as if it wanted to run loose all over her face. "Sure, I
haven't my mind made--quite. And yourself?"

"Oh--I?" Marjorie Schuyler leaned forward a trifle. "Did you know I
was engaged?"

"Betrothed? Holy Saint Bridget bless ye!" And the vagabond gloves
clasped the slender hands of the American prototype and gave them a
hard little squeeze. "Who's himself?"

"It's Billy Burgeman, son of _the_ Burgeman."

"Old King Midas?"

"That's a new name for him."

"It has fitted him years enough." Patsy's face sobered. "Oh, why does
money always have to mate with money? Why couldn't you have married a
poor great man--a poet, a painter, a thinker, a dreamer--some one who
ought not to be bound down by his heels to the earth for
bread-gathering or shelter-building? You could have cut the thongs
and sent him soaring--given the world another 'Prometheus Unbound.'
As for Billy Burgeman--he could have married--me," and Patsy spread
her hands in mock petition.

Marjorie Schuyler laughed. "You! That is too beautifully delicious!
Why, Patsy O'Connell, William Burgeman is the most conventional young
gentleman I have ever met in my life. You would shock him into a
semi-comatose condition in an afternoon--and, pray, what would you
do with him?"

"Sure, I'd make a man of him, that's what. His father's son might
need it, I'm thinking."

Marjorie Schuyler's face became perfectly blank for a second, then
she leaned against the baronial arms on the back of her seat, tilted
her head, and mused aloud: "I wonder just what Billy Burgeman does
lack? Sometimes I've wondered if it was not having a mother, or
growing up without brothers or sisters, or living all alone with his
father in that great, gloomy, walled-in, half-closed house. It is not
a lack of manhood--I'm sure of that; and it's not lack of caring, for
he can care a