bstractedly; then, with
sudden fervor: "Oh, Bertram, hasn't Mr. Mary Jane a beautiful voice?"

Bertram wished then he had not asked the question; but all he said was:

"'Mr. Mary Jane,' indeed! What an absurd name!"

"But doesn't he sing beautifully?"

"Eh? Oh, yes, he sings all right," said Bertram's tongue. Bertram's
manner said: "Oh, yes, anybody can sing."

CHAPTER VIII. M. J. OPENS THE GAME

On the morning after Cyril's first concert of the season, Billy sat
sewing with Aunt Hannah in the little sitting-room at the end of the
hall upstairs. Aunt Hannah wore only one shawl this morning,--which
meant that she was feeling unusually well.

"Marie ought to be here to mend these stockings," remarked Billy, as she
critically examined a tiny break in the black silk mesh stretched across
the darning-egg in her hand; "only she'd want a bigger hole. She does so
love to make a beautiful black latticework bridge across a yawning white
china sea--and you'd think the safety of an army depended on the way
each plank was laid, too," she concluded.

Aunt Hannah smiled tranquilly, but she did not speak.

"I suppose you don't happen to know if Cyril does wear big holes in his
socks," resumed Billy, after a moment's silence. "If you'll believe it,
that thought popped into my head last night when Cyril was playing
that concerto so superbly. It did, actually--right in the middle of the
adagio movement, too. And in spite of my joy and pride in the music I
had all I could do to keep from nudging Marie right there and then and
asking her whether or not the dear man was hard on his hose."

"Billy!" gasped the shocked Aunt Hannah; but the gasp broke at once into
what--in Aunt Hannah--passed for a chuckle. "If I remember rightly, when
I was there at the house with you at first, my dear, William told me
that Cyril wouldn't wear any sock after it came to mending."

"Horrors!" Billy waved her stocking in mock despair. "That will never
do in the world. It would break Marie's heart. You know how she dotes on
darning."

"Yes, I know," smiled Aunt Hannah. "By the way, where is she this
morning?"

Billy raised her eyebrows quizzically.

"Gone to look at an apartment in Cambridge, I believe. Really,
Aunt Hannah, between her home-hunting in the morning, and her
furniture-and-rug hunting in the afternoon, and her poring over
house-plans in the evening, I can't get her to attend to her clothes at
all. Never did I see a bride so ut