"Did Billy fall out?" said the voice, with plaintive cadence. "Poor
Billy!"

"He can't be," muttered Bertie. "Are you?" he loudly repeated.

There was no answer: but steps came along the road as Bertie checked and
pacified the gelding. Then Billy appeared by the wheel. "Poor Billy
fell out," he said mildly. He held something up, which Bertie took. It
had been Billy's straw hat, now a brimless fabric of ruin. Except for
smirches and one inexpressible rent which dawn revealed to Bertie a
little later, there were no further injuries, and Billy got in and took
his seat quite competently.

Bertie drove the gelding with a firm hand after this. They passed
through the cool of the unseen meadow swamps, and heard the sound of the
hollow bridges as they crossed them, and now and then the gulp of some
pouring brook. They went by the few lights of Mattapan, seeing from
some points on their way the beacons of the harbor, and again the
curving line of lamps that drew the outline of some village built upon a
hill. Dawn showed them Jamaica Pond, smooth and breezeless, and
encircled with green skeins of foliage, delicate and new. Here
multitudinous birds were chirping their tiny, overwhelming chorus. When
at length, across the flat suburban spaces, they again sighted Memorial
tower, small in the distance, the sun was lighting it.

Confronted by this, thoughts of hitherto banished care, and of the
morrow that was now to-day, and of Philosophy 4 coming in a very few
hours, might naturally have arisen and darkened the end of their
pleasant excursion. Not so, however. Memorial tower suggested another
line of argument. It was Billy who spoke, as his eyes first rested upon