"I shall go to Cedersholm to-morrow. I have not spoken about terms, but that will be all right, and if you ladies will be so good as to wait until Saturday----" Of course they would wait. If it had not been that their means were so cruelly limited, they would never have spoken. Didn't he think?... He knew! he thought they were the best, dearest friends a young fortune hunter could have. Wait, wait till they could see his name in the papers--Antony Fairfax, the rising sculptor! Wait until they could go with him to the unveiling of his work in Central Park! Supper was already on the table, and Antony talked to them both until they _could_ hardly wait for the wonders! "When you're great you'll not forget us, Mr. Antony?" "Forget them----!" Over the cold mutton and the potato salad, Fairfax held out a hand to each, and the little old ladies each laid a fluttering hand in his. But it was at Miss Eulalie he looked, and the remembrance of his happy kiss on this first day of his good fortune, made her more maternal than she had ever hoped to be in her life. There was a note for him on the table upstairs, a note in a big envelope with the business stamp of Mr. Carew's bank in the corner. It was addressed to him in red ink. He didn't know the handwriting, but guessed, and laughed, and drew the letter out. "DEAR COUSIN ANTONY, "I feel perfectly dreadful. How _could_ I do such a selfish thing? I hope you will forgive me and come again. I drew two whole pages of parlel lines after you went away, some are nearly strait. I did it for punishment. You forgot the blackbird. "Your little BELLA." What a cad he had been! He had forgotten the dead bird and been a brute to the little living cousin. As the remembrance of how she had flown to him in her tears came to him, a softer look crossed his face, fell like a veil over his eyes that had been dazzled by the visions of his art. He smiled at the childish signature, "_Your little Bella._" "Honey child!" he murmured, and as he fell asleep that night the figure of the little cousin mourning for her blackbird moved before him down the halls of fame. CHAPTER XVI Before Fairfax became dead to the world he wrote his mother a letter that made her cry, reading it on her veranda in the gentle sunlight. Her son wrote her only good news, and when the truth was too black he disguised it. But after his interview with Cedersholm, with these first good tidings he had to send, he broke forth into ecstasy, and his mother, as she read, saw her boy successful by one turn of the wheel. Mrs. Fairfax laughed and cried over the letter. "Emmy, Master Tony's doing wonders, wonders! He is working under a great genius in the North, but it is easy to see that Tony is the spirit of the studio. He is at work from nine in the morning till dark, poor honey boy! and he is making all the drawings and designs and sketches for a millionaire's palace on Fifth Avenue." "Fo' de Lawd, Mis' Bella."