Outside Inn

"You've done more than well, Billy, and I'm grateful to you. Of course, you would have saved me days of nervous wear and tear if it had only occurred to you to tell me the one simple little thing that was the essential point of the whole matter. If I had known that I didn't inherit for two years, I wouldn't have cared what was in that will."

Billy stared at her feelingly.

"A peculiar sensation always comes over me," he said musingly, "after I spend several hours uninterruptedly in the society of a woman who is using her mind in any way. I couldn't explain it to you exactly. It's a kind of impression that my own brain has begun to disintegrate, and to--"

"Don't be too hard on yourself, Billy." Nancy soothed him sweetly,--Billy was not one of the people to whom she habitually allowed full conversational leeway: "Swear you won't tell Caroline or Betty--or Dick."

"I swear."

Nancy held out her hand to him.

"You're a good boy," she said, "and I appreciate you, w