When Billie heard the story, she was so angry with Mrs. St. Clair and Miss Gray and Fannie Alta that she took an imaginary aim and pitched both shoes across the room with all her force.
“Oh, my dear, my dear,” she cried, throwing her arms about her friend’s neck with affectionate fervor, “you have at least one devoted friend who will stand by you through everything.”
Mary was touched by Billie’s devotion and by and by the two girls dropped off to sleep in spite of their troubled hearts.
But they were up and dressed before any one except the servants was stirring in the house. Randolph, greatly amazed, and imploring the young ladies to wait and take at least a cup of coffee, led the way to the carriage house where the motor had been left.
“Tell Mrs. St. Clair,” said Billie, “that I was called home early and will write to her.”
No one knew but the colored servant, and he did not understand, that Mary and Billie had refused to eat anything in a house where one of them had been called a thief.
“Mary, tell your mother the whole story,” said Billie, as she dropped her friend at “The Sign of the Blue Tea Pot.” “Tell her not to be uneasy. Your friends know you are innocent and it is all obliged to come out right.”
Then she dashed around the Square, turned up Cliff Street, and stopped at the home of Miss Helen Campbell.
“No, I haven’t had breakfast,” she said to the old man servant, who opened the door. “I’ll eat with Cousin Helen if she hasn’t breakfasted.”
“Miss Campbell will not eat any breakfast this morning, Miss Billie,” replied the butler.
“No, Miss,” the old man lowered his voice, “but she’s wearing her black dress.”
“No, Miss. That’s just the queer part. It ain’t the anniversary. We know when that comes now. But something’s happened.”
“Nothing to do with papa?” she asked anxiously.
“I’ll have some breakfast, then,” she said. “I’m very hungry from the ride in town.”
Billie ate a hurried but hearty meal alone.
“I never can do anything when I’m empty,” she often said, and instinctively she felt that trouble of some sort was brewing.
After breakfast she tapped on her cousin’s door.
“Come in,” came the tremulous answer, and Billie entered a darkened room.
Miss Campbell, looking faded and pale and wearing a black crepe dress, was sitting alone at the far end of her apartment. Her hands were crossed on her breast like a mediæval saint’s, and she looked the very picture of hopeless misery.