delighted to see you,
but my orders are like time and tide. They wait for no man. This must be
finished and out of the house to-night, and I've not more than fifteen
minutes of good daylight left. So just look around and make yourself at
home and take my hospitable will for the deed till I get through. In the
meantime you can be telling me all about yourself."

"There's precious little to tell, no adventures of any kind--just the
plain routine of business. But _you've_ had changes," he added, looking
around the room with keen interest. "This isn't much like the bare barn
of a place I saw you in last. You must have struck oil. Have you taken a
partner?"

"Several of them," she replied, "although I don't know whether they
should be called partners or boarders or adopted waifs. They are all
three of these things in a way. It began with two people who sat at the
same table with me those first miserable months when I was boarding. One
was a little cheerful wren of a woman from a little Western town, a
Mrs. Boyd. That is, she is cheerful now. Then she was like a bird in a
cage, pining to death for the freedom she had been accustomed to, and
moping on her perch. She came to New York to bring her niece, Lucy, who
is all she has to live for. Some art teacher back home told her that
Lucy is a genius--has the makings of a great artist in her, and they
believed it. She'll never get beyond fruit-pieces and maybe a dab at
china-painting, but she's happy in the hope that she'll be a
world-wonder some day. Neither of them have a practical bone in their
body, whereas I have always been a sort of Robinson Crusoe at furnishing
up desert islands.

"So I proposed to these two castaways that we go in together and make a
home to suit ourselves. We were so dead tired of boarding. About that
time we picked up Henry, and as Henry has a noble bank account we went
into the project on a more lavish scale than we could have done
otherwise."

"_Henry!_" ejaculated Phil, who was watching the silhouette against the
window with evident pleasure.

"Yes, Miss Henrietta Robbins, a bachelor maid of some--well, I won't
tell how many summers, but she's 'past the freakish bounds of youth,'
and a real artist. She's studied abroad, and she's done things worth
while. That group of fishermen on the Normandy coast is hers," nodding
towards the opposite wall, "and that old woman peeling apples, and those
three portraits. Oh, she's the real thing, and a constan