The house that bore the number Pete had given proved to have a pretentious doorway, and a landlady who, in response to the summons of the neat maid, appeared with a most impressive rustle of black silk and jet bugles. No, Mr. William Henshaw was not in his rooms. In fact, he was very seldom there. His business, she believed, called him to State Street through the day. Outside of that, she had been told, he spent much time sitting on a bench in the Common. Doubtless, if they cared to search, they could find him there now. “A bench in the Common, indeed!” stormed Billy, as she and Bertram hurried down the wide stone steps. “Uncle William--on a bench!” “But surely now, dear,” ventured her husband, “you'll come home and get your dinner!” Billy turned indignantly. “And leave Uncle William on a bench in the Common? Indeed, no! Why, Bertram, you wouldn't, either,” she cried, as she turned resolutely toward one of the entrances to the Common. And Bertram, with the “eyes all shining” still before him, could only murmur: “No, of course not, dear!” and follow obediently where she led. Under ordinary circumstances it would have been a delightful hour for a walk. The sun had almost set, and the shadows lay long across the grass. The air was cool and unusually bracing for a day so early in September. But all this was lost on Bertram. Bertram did not wish to take a walk. He was hungry. He wanted his dinner; and he wanted, too, his old home with his new wife flitting about the rooms as he had pictured this first evening together. He wanted William, of course. Certainly he wanted William; but if William would insist on running away and sitting on park benches in this ridiculous fashion, he ought to take the consequences--until to-morrow. Five, ten, fifteen minutes passed. Up one path and down another trudged the anxious-eyed Billy and her increasingly impatient husband. Then when the fifteen weary minutes had become a still more weary half-hour, the bonds Bertram had set on his temper snapped. “Billy,” he remonstrated despairingly, “do, please, come home! Don't you see how highly improbable it is that we should happen on William if we walked like this all night? He might move--change his seat--go home, even. He probably has gone home. And surely never before did a bride insist on spending the first evening after her return tramping up and down a public park for hour after hour like this, looking for any man. _Won't_ you come home?” But Billy had not even heard. With a glad little cry she had darted to the side of the humped-up figure of a man alone on a park bench just ahead of them. “Uncle William! Oh, Uncle William, how could you?” she cried, dropping herself on to one end of the seat and catching the man's arm in both her hands. “Yes, how could you?” demanded Bertram, with just a touch of irritation, dropping himself on to the other end of the seat, and catching the man's other arm in his one usable hand.