Billy was duly amused and interested. She laughed and clapped her hands,
and when the story was done she clapped them again.

"Oh, what a funny house! And how perfectly lovely that I'm going to
live in it," she cried. Then straight at Mrs. Hartwell she hurled a
bombshell. "But where is your stratum?" she demanded. "Mr. Bertram
didn't mention a thing about you!"

Cyril said a sharp word under his breath. Bertram choked over a cough.
Kate threw into William's eyes a look that was at once angry, accusing,
and despairing. Then William spoke.

"Er--she--it isn't anywhere, my dear," he stammered; "or rather, it
isn't here. Kate lives up on the Avenue, you see, and is only here
for--for a day or two--just now."

"Oh!" murmured Billy. And there was not one in the room at that moment
who did not bless Spunk--for Spunk suddenly leaped to the table before
him; and in the ensuing confusion his mistress quite forgot to question
further concerning Mrs. Hartwell's stratum.

Dinner over, the three men, with their sister and Billy, trailed
up-stairs to the drawing-rooms. Billy told them, then, of her life at
Hampden Falls. She cried a little at the mention of Aunt Ella; and she
portrayed very vividly the lonely life from which she herself had so
gladly escaped. She soon had every one laughing, even Cyril, over her
stories of the lawyer's home that might have been hers, with its gloom
and its hush and its socketed chairs.