"We all do the things we like best. Richard reads and takes long walks or fishes, if there is a stream. I clean the van from top to bottom and polish everything up and bake a cake in the little oven. Then I darn all the stockings and mend the clothes." Billie laughed. "You're not a Gypsy," she said, "if you are a black-eyed wanderer. They never mend or clean anything. But what does Miss Swinnerton like to do? Is she fond of housework, too?" "Amy? No, not specially. She sketches and paints in water colors, and botanizes, and looks for bits of stones and rocks which she examines through a glass, and translates French and generally potters around. She's always busy. She can do anything from making an omelette to painting a picture." Billie turned her eyes half wistfully toward the plump brown-haired Amy Swinnerton. She felt suddenly very inefficient and worthless. "I can't do anything," she said, frowning. "I'm ashamed of myself." "You can run a motor car and keep it in order," answered the new friend. "I never knew another girl who could." "That's ground into me by experience. But I hate sewing. I'm not a good cook and I can't draw or paint or play the piano. We met a girl this summer who has been brought up in a cabin on the mountain and has never been to school in her life, who knows a lot more than I do." Billie told what little she knew of the strange history of Phoebe. "It would make a wonderful story," observed Maggie. "I should like to put it into a book." "Do you write, too?" asked Billie eagerly. Maggie blinked her dark, bright eyes. "When you see my name appear in book reviews and magazines and things, then you'll know I write," she replied. This conversation occurred the next morning at breakfast. Billie had risen at dawn and repaired the "Comet" and the motor party was soon now to start on its homeward journey. Richard Hook presently joined his sister and Billie. Sitting cross-legged on the ground at their feet, he munched a bacon sandwich and sipped black coffee from a tin cup. He reminded Billie of one of Shakespeare's wise fools. All he lacked were the cap and bells. His whimsical, humorous eyes were rather far apart; his dark hair, cropped close, stood up straight over his forehead. His nose was distinguished in shape and his flexible mouth turned up at the corners. He talked slowly with a sort of twang like a farmer from the east coast and there was a kind of hidden humor under whatever he said. He had charming old-world manners, and an old-fashioned way of saying "I thank you," or "Permit me, ma'am," or "At your service, ma'am." He was really quite a delightful person, they unanimously decided; and so was his sister and so was her friend. Billie wondered what Richard Hook's work was; or whether perhaps he was still in college. She wondered a great many things about him, and she felt quite sure that he was not well off. Presently she said: