She rose and tiptoed out into the living-room. There might be more notes there. Her spirits had gone up, and she was laughing to herself a little--it felt like exploring Bluebeard's castle. She investigated the book case, shaking out every book. She ran up to the toy balcony and even pushed out the couch there, noticing for the first time that the balcony had curtains which could be drawn. But there was nothing behind couch or curtains. She put her hands on the little railing and looked down at the room below her, to see if she had missed anything. And her eyes fell on a cupboard which was level with the wall at one side, and had so escaped her eye heretofore. Also there was a scrapbasket which might tell tales. She dashed down the little stair, and made for the scrapbasket, but Francis was more thorough than she had thought, and it was empty. She opened the cupboard and looked in--there was a little flashlight lying near it, and she illuminated the dark with it. There in the cupboard lay a banjo. "Gracious!" breathed Marjorie. "What a memory!" For she _could_ play the banjo, and it appeared that she must have said so to Francis in those first days. "He must have dashed home and made out lists every night!" she concluded as she dragged it out. It was unstrung, but new strings lay near it, coiled in their papers. And under the papers, so like them that he had forgotten to destroy it, lay a veritable note. "It isn't really from him to me," she thought, her heart beating unaccountably as she sat back on her heels and tore the envelope open. "It's from the Francis he thought he was, to the Marjorie he thought I was." But she read it just the same. "For my dear little girl, if she comes true," was the superscription. "I don't know whether you'll find this first or last, honey. But it's for you to play on, sometimes, in the evenings, sitting on the window-seat with me, or out on the veranda if you'd rather. But wherever you sit to play it, I may stay quite close to you, mayn't I?" She was tired and overstrained. That was probably why she put both arms around the banjo as if it was somebody that loved her, and cried on it very much as if it were a baby. And when she went back to her room to replace things as she had found them she carried it with her. She was calmer after that, for some reason. She had the illogical feeling that some one had been kind to her. She put her things away in the drawers, and even had the courage to lay out for herself the all-enveloping gingham apron, much shortened, which Mrs. O'Mara had loaned her till she and Peggy could run up some more. She supposed Francis would want her to start in with the cooking that night. So she put on her plainest dress and easiest shoes, and then, there being nothing else to do, took the banjo out into the sitting-room and began to string it. And as she strung she thought.