It being Shirley’s birthday, that young person’s wishes ruled the hour. Prompted by Rufus, who thirsted for something lively, she decreed a game of hide-and-seek over the whole house, and succeeded in enticing the elder people into the frolic. Mr. Townsend and Murray, coming from the library, found things in full swing. Mr. Bell was just emerging from a small closet under the staircase, his hair much rumpled. Mrs. Bell, laughing blithely, had run round a corner of the reception-room and touched "goal" before her son Rufus could swing himself down the stairs and get in ahead of her. Mrs. Townsend--and her husband could not quite credit his eyes as he saw her--was, with trailing skirts held close, squeezing out of a very small corner behind the grand piano in the drawing-room. "Well, well!" cried the newcomers, enthusiastically. "Let us into the game." "Come on!" shouted Rufus. "Father ’s ’it’! Let’s play it in another way, and hide for keeps. Everybody stay hid till found, and each man found join the hunt. Makes it nice and exciting for the last fellow." "You ’ll have to tell us our bounds pretty carefully," said Mr. Bell, smiling at his hostess. "In our excitement we may open the wrong doors." "Open any door," responded Mrs. Townsend promptly, feeling more like a girl again than she had felt in many years of formal entertaining, and preparing, as she spoke, to hurry up the staircase to a retreat that she felt would be secure. It proved great fun, and a full half-hour went by before the last one was found. Murray had been the first to be discovered, his head so full of the late talk in the library that he had somewhat dazedly secreted himself in a position easily come upon by Mr. Bell. So when the second round began, it was Murray who stood counting the tale of numbers in the hall below, while his quarry scurried away over the house. "He knows every nook and corner of it, of course," whispered Ross to Jane, as they ran lightly up the second flight of stairs, "so we ’ll have to hide pretty close to escape him. I ’m for a closet I know of where there’s a pile of blankets as big as a barn. Will you come?" "No--I know a better place," and Jane slipped away by herself. She meant to be the last found, and to elude Murray as long as she could, a very girlish feeling having taken possession of her that the time to run away is the time when you see somebody looking uncommonly as if he would like to be with you. Although she longed to hear the outcome of the conference in the library, she was somehow just a little afraid of the new Murray, and it was with a delightful sense of exhilaration that she made her quick and quiet way up a third flight of stairs to one of Shirley’s haunts in an unused portion of the regions under the eaves.