“I hope so. Now, Tom, as it is late, you had better go home to your mother. She may be uneasy about you.” “Yes, mist’ess, dat’s so. So mammy mought. Good-night, mist’ess.” “Good-night, Tom.” The boy went away. Roma passed into her chamber, and seeing her newly recovered pet sleeping most sweetly and safely on the outside of her bed, kneeled down by the side and gave thanks to heaven for the restoration of the child. Then she prayed for Will Harcourt. Finally she arose, and undressed the little slumberer, so softly and deftly that the latter did not wake. Only as she laid her between the sheets Owlet murmured in her dreams something about “Lady” and “Ducky Darling,” and some one else who “was not possessed of common sense.” Then almost instantly she relapsed into sound sleep. Roma went to bed. Toward morning Owlet talked again in her sleep, this time of “Mr. William” and of “Mrs. Annie.” In the gray of the dawn she half awoke, and spoke to her bedfellow, calling her “Mrs. Annie.” But when Miss Fronde replied, Owlet instantly remembered where she was, and with a sigh of ineffable content she sank into happy sleep again. CHAPTER XXX OWLET HARPS UPON HER ’VENTURES In the morning, when both awoke almost simultaneously to a new sense of their reunion, the sun was shining through their front windows. When they arose from bed, Roma would have begun to wash and dress little Owlet, just from the impulse of passionate affection, intensified by the startling loss and sudden recovery of the child; but the changeling, independent and self-reliant as ever, insisted that she both could and would wash and dress her “own self.” Which she did, making herself, in her cheap calico frock and white apron, look like a rumpled pink and white hollyhock. Then they went down by the elevator. George Brown, son of the janitress, was running it. “Where’s Titus?” inquired Owlet. “He wasn’t here when Mr. Merritt brought me up in it.” “Titus, dear, has been sick in the hospital, but he is getting well now,” Roma explained. The elevator touched the basement floor, and they got out. When they entered the restaurant they found Tom waiting for them. Owlet left Miss Fronde’s side and made a dash at him. “Oh, Tom! I am so glad to see you!” “So am I you, Miss Cafferine—moughty g’ad an’ moughty p’oud! But I doane lib yere now. No mo’ do mammy. She take in washin’, an’ I fetch an’ ca’y out clo’es.” “How is it, then, that you are here this morning, Tom?” gently inquired Miss Fronde.