a pair of interrogatory eyebrows. “Why—it can’t be. The entire company went back weeks ago. What is she like—small and brown, with very pink cheeks and very blue eyes?”

The maid nodded ambiguously.

“Bring her up. I know it can’t be, but—”

But it was. The next moment Marjorie Schuyler was taking a firm grip of Patsy’s shoulders while she looked down with mock disapproval at the girl who reached barely to her shoulder.

“Patsy O’Connell! Why didn’t you go home with the others—and what have you done to your cheeks?”

Patsy attacked them with two merciless fists. “Sure, they’re after needing a pinch of north-of-Ireland wind, that’s all. How’s yourself?”

Marjorie Schuyler pushed her gently into a great chair, while she herself took a carved baronial seat opposite. The nearness of anything so exquisitely perfect as Marjorie Schuyler, and the comparison it was bound to suggest, would have been a conscious ordeal for almost any other girl. But Patsy was oblivious of the comparison—oblivious of the fact that she looked like a wood-thrush neighboring with a bird of paradise. Her brown Norfolk suit was a shabby affair—positively clamoring for a successor; the boyish brown beaver—lacking feather or flower—was pulled down rakishly over her mass of brown curls, and the vagabond gloves gave a consistent finish to the picture. And yet there was that about Patsy which defied comparison even with Marjorie 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 lot about some things. But what is it? I would give a great deal to know.”

“If the tales about old King Midas have a thruppence worth of truth in them, it might be his father’s meanness that’s ailing him.”

Marjorie Schuyler shook her head. “No; Billy’s almost a prodigal. His father says he hasn’t the slightest idea of the value of money; it’s just so much beans or shells or knives or trading pelf with him; something to exchange for what he calls the real things of life. Why, when he was a boy—in fact, until he was almost grown—his father couldn’t trust Billy with a cent.”

“Who said that—Billy or the king?”

“His father, of course. That’s why he has never taken Billy into business with him. He is making Billy win his spurs—on his own merits; and he’s not going to let him into the firm until he’s worth at least five thousand a year to some other firm. Oh, Mr. Burgeman has excellent ideas about bringing up a son! Billy ought to amount to a great deal.”

“Meaning money or character?” inquired Patsy.

Marjorie Schuyler looked at her sharply. “Are you laughing?”

“Faith, I’m closer to weeping; ’twould be a lonesome, hard rearing that would come to a son of King Midas, I’m thinking. I’d far rather be the son of his gooseherd, if I had the choosing.”

She leaned forward impulsively and gathered up the hands of the girl opposite in the warm, friendly compass of those vagabond gloves. “Do ye really love him, cailin a’sthore?” And this time it was her look that was sharp.

“Why, of course I love him! What a foolish question! Why should I be marrying him if I didn’t love him? Why do you ask?”

“Because—the son of King Midas with no mother, with no one at all but the king, growing up all alone in a gloomy old castle, with no one trusting him, would need a great deal of love—a great, great deal—”

“That’s all right, Ellen. I’ll find her for myself.” It was a man’s voice, pitched overhigh; it came from somewhere beyond and below the inclosing curtains and cut off the last of Patsy’s speech.

“That’s funny,” said Marjorie Schuyler, rising. “There’s Billy now. I’ll bring him in and let you see for yourself that he’s not at all an object of sympathy—or pity.”

She disappeared into the library, leaving Patsy speculating recklessly. They must have met just the other side of the closed hangings, for to Patsy their voices sounded very near and close together.

“Hello, Billy!”

“Listen, Marjorie; if a girl loves a man she ought to be willing to trust him over a dreadful bungle until he could straighten things out and make good again—that’s true, isn’t it?”

“Billy Burgeman! What do you mean?”

“Just answer my question. If a girl loves a man she’ll trust him, won’t she?”

“I suppose so.”

“You know she would, dear. What would the man do if she didn’t?”

The voice sounded strained and unnatural in its intensity and appeal. Patsy rose, troubled in mind, and tiptoed to the only other door in the den.

“’Tis a grand situation for a play,” she remarked, dryly, “but ’tis a mortial poor one in real life, and I’m best out of it.” She turned the knob with eager fingers and pulled the door toward her. It opened on a dumbwaiter shaft, empty and impressive. Patsy’s expression would have scored a hit in farce comedy. Unfortunately there was no audience present to appreciate it here, and the prompter forgot to ring down