this was the most
certain method of bringing his friend to do his will.

"I'm so sorry, Billy," she said gently. "I do want to go; but I must go
somewhere else this morning."

"Let me go, too," he suggested. "I'd as soon ride one way as another."

"Oh, no," she said hastily; "and I'm not ready yet. Does your head ache
very badly, Billy?"

"Very," answered the deceiver, assuming the look of a martyr. "And I
didn't sleep any, last night."

"What a shame! Aren't you well?" Theodora sat down on the steps and
gazed so steadily at him that he blushed.

"I believe you're shamming, Billy," she said sternly. "You've no more
headache than Mulvaney."

He laughed, with conscious pleasure in his guilt.

"Well, what if I haven't? I shall have, some day. Really, Ted, what is
the reason you won't ride with me?"

"I can't, Billy; that's all there is about it. I've something else I
must do."

"You might tell me what it is," he observed persuasively.

"I might, but I won't." Then her heart smote her at sight of his
disappointed face, as he turned away. "Some day, Billy," she called
after him.

He nodded, as he pulled off his cap. Then he left her.

She stood looking after him, as he went rolling away down the street. It
was good to see him so independent with his new tricycle. He was growing
almost as independent in the use of his crutches, and his life was quite
another thing from the old limited existence when Theodora had first
known him. But through it all, in gray days and in bright, she had
always found him the same Billy, always ready to enter into her
interests, from which of necessity he had been shut out, ready to give
her a share in his own more luxurious existence. In a sense, he had been
a sort of fairy godfather to Theodora, and to him and to his mother she
owed a large part of her pleasures during the past few months.

How would he take the news of this last venture of hers, she asked
herself. Still, he was responsible, indirectly at least, if not for the
fact itself, yet for the ambition which had led to the fact. Theodora's
brows puckered into an anxious frown for a moment. Then they cleared,
and she hummed lightly to herself, as she stood looking up the street
after her friend, who had long since disappeared from her view. It would
have been an ideal morning for a ride, she knew, and she wished she
might have gone off for a long spin over the country roads. Still, her
face wore a very contented express