“Indeed I will,” smiled Billy, “and thank you just the same; only”--her eyes twinkled mischievously--“you don't mind if I do say that it IS lucky that we hadn't gone on planning to have me live with them, Mr. Harding!” “Eh? Well--er, I think your plan about the Henshaws is very good,” he interposed hurriedly. “I'll speak to Ned--I'll speak to Ned,” he finished, as he ceremoniously bowed the girl from the office. James Harding kept his word, and spoke to his son that night; but there was little, after all, that Ned could tell him. Yes, he remembered Billy Henshaw well, but he had not heard of him for years, since Henshaw's marriage, in fact. He must be forty years old, Ned said; but he was a fine fellow, an exceptionally fine fellow, and would be sure to deal kindly and wisely by his little orphan namesake; of that Ned was very sure. “That's good. I'll write him,” declared Mr. James Harding. “I'll write him tomorrow.” He did write--but not so soon as Billy wrote; for even as he spoke, Billy, in her lonely little room at the other end of the town, was laying bare all her homesickness in four long pages to “Dear Uncle William.” CHAPTER II “THE STRATA” Bertram Henshaw called the Beacon Street home “The Strata.” This annoyed Cyril, and even William, not a little; though they reflected that, after all, it was “only Bertram.” For the whole of Bertram's twenty-four years of life it had been like this--“It's only Bertram,” had been at once the curse and the salvation of his existence. In this particular case, however, Bertram's vagary of fancy had some excuse. The Beacon Street house, the home of the three brothers, was a “Strata.” “You see, it's like this,” Bertram would explain airily to some new acquaintance who expressed surprise at the name; “if I could slice off the front of the house like a loaf of cake, you'd understand it better. But just suppose that old Bunker Hill should suddenly spout fire and brimstone and bury us under tons of ashes--only fancy the condition of mind of those future archaeologists when they struck our house after their months of digging! “What would they find? Listen. First: stratum number one, the top floor; that's Cyril's, you know. They'd note the bare floors, the sparse but heavy furniture, the piano, the violin, the flute, the book-lined walls, and the absence of every sort of curtain, cushion, or knickknack. 'Here lived a plain man,' they'd say; 'a scholar, a musician, stern, unloved and unloving; a monk.'