The mountain-girl was therefore persuaded to remain with them for the rest of the trip, and presently they drew up near a pine forest where there was a little stream. Ben lifted out the luncheon hamper and the tea basket, and while the girls unpacked the food, Phoebe stood shyly by and watched the proceedings. With a heightened color she glanced from Billie's and Elinor's neat skirts and pongee blouses to her own faded calico dress. She spread out her brown fingers stained with berry juice, and looked at them sadly. Then her face brightened. "I was almost forgetting," she said out loud, but to no one. "I am always in too great a hurry. I have waited a long time and now it is beginning to come. It was too soon last summer, but now at last it is time." Dr. Hume noticed Phoebe talking to herself and shook his head. "Too much alone," he thought. Meanwhile, Billie, piling sandwiches on the lunch cloth, was busy thinking of something far different. Her glance shifted from Dr. Hume to Phoebe and back again. She closed her eyes and the thought which at first she saw dimly in the dark recesses of her mind advanced to the open, took form and shape and presently boldly showed itself as a full-grown plan. Billie, sitting abstractedly on the ground, piling and re-piling the sandwiches, was startled by Ben's rather impatient voice. "I'll have to fall-to unless you give the word, Billie; I'm famished." "Excuse my absent-mindedness, Ben," laughed Billie. "I had just thought up a wild, though perfectly feasible scheme, and I couldn't turn my mind to mere food for a moment." "And the scheme is?" demanded Elinor, seating herself at the lunch table while she waited for the water to boil. "I shall have to wait to tell you until it's ready to serve up," answered Billie, "nice and brown and done through." "Why, Billie, what kind of kitchen talk is that?" exclaimed Elinor, laughing. "You'll be seeing with the eyes of a cook next. Sunsets will remind you of tomato soup and clouds will make you think of meringues and--" Elinor broke off, her eyes wide with astonishment, and the others following the direction of her gaze saw that she was looking at a man who had crept into their midst so silently that no one had noticed him. In that haggard and unshaved face they recognized Mr. Lupo. "Something to eat," he demanded fiercely. "I'm almost starved." Without a word Billie handed him several sandwiches and some fruit. "Eat it over there," she ordered, pointing to a distant tree, "and afterwards you can tell us what is the matter." The others admired her calm assurance with the half-breed, but Billie was tired of the Lupos. The wife had come near being the death of her beloved cousin, and the husband was a lazy, loafing fellow. Such was her judgment of them.