ar, and not use one of them but five times. I've counted.
There are exactly seventy-three," he concluded, as he laughingly led the
way from the room.

"How about leap year?" quizzed Billy.

"Ho! Trust Will to find another 'Old Blue' or a 'perfect treasure of a
black basalt' by that time," shrugged Bertram.

Below William's rooms was the floor once Bertram's, but afterwards given
over to the use of Billy and Aunt Hannah. The rooms were open to-day,
and were bright with sunshine and roses; but they were very plainly
unoccupied.

"And you don't use them yet?" remonstrated Billy, as she paused at an
open door.

"No. These are Mrs. Bertram Henshaw's rooms," said the youngest Henshaw
brother in a voice that made Billy hurry away with a dimpling blush.

"They were Billy's--and they can never seem any one's but Billy's, now,"
declared William to Marie, as they went down the stairs.

"And now for the den and some good stories before the fire," proposed
Bertram, as the six reached the first floor again.

"But we haven't seen your pictures, yet," objected Billy.

Bertram made a deprecatory gesture.

"There's nothing much--" he began; but he stopped at once, with an odd
laugh. "Well, I sha'n't say _that_," he finished, flinging open the door
of his studio, and pressing a button that flooded the room with light.
The next moment, as they stood before those plaques and panels and
canvases--on each of which was a pictured "Billy"--they understood the
change in his sentence, and they laughed appreciatively.

"'Much,' indeed!" exclaimed William.

"Oh, how lovely!" breathed Marie.

"My grief and conscience, Bertram! All these--and of Billy? I knew you
had a good many, but--" Aunt Hannah paused impotently, her eyes going
from Bertram's face to the pictures again.

"But how--when did you do them?" queried Marie.

"Some of them from memory. More of them from life. A lot of them were
just sketches that I did when she was here in the house four or five
years ago," answered Bertram; "like this, for instance." And he pulled
into a better light a picture of a laughing, dark-eyed girl holding
against her cheek a small gray kitten, with alert, bright eyes. "The
original and only Spunk," he announced.

"What a dear little cat!" cried Marie.

"You should have seen it--in the flesh," remarked Cyril, dryly. "No
paint nor painter could imprison that untamed bit of Satanic mischief on
any canvas that ever grew!"

Everybody laughed-