artist. She spent, indeed, quite half an hour turning her head from side
to side, and demanding "Now how's that?--and that?" Tiring at last of
this, she suggested Spunk as a substitute, remarking that, after all,
cats--pretty cats like Spunk--were even nicer to paint than girls.

She rescued Spunk then from the paint-box where he had been holding high
carnival with Bertram's tubes of paint, and demanded if Bertram ever saw
a more delightful, more entrancing, more altogether-to-be-desired
model. She was so artless, so merry, so frankly charmed with it all that
Bertram could not find it in his heart to be angry, notwithstanding
his annoyance. But when at four o'clock, she took herself and her cat
cheerily up-stairs, he lifted his hands in despair.

"Great Scott!" he groaned. "If this is a sample of what's coming--I'm
GOING, that's all!"



CHAPTER XII

CYRIL TAKES HIS TURN


Billy had been a member of the Beacon Street household a week before she
repeated her visit to Cyril at the top of the house. This time Bertram
was not with her. She went alone. Even Spunk was left behind--Billy
remembered her prospective host's aversion to cats.

Billy did not feel that she knew Cyril very well. She had tried several
times to chat with him; but she had made so little headway, that she