Evening after evening Barbran and Phil Stacey sat in the cellar almost or quite alone.  So far as I could judge from my occasional visits of patronage (Barbran furnished excellent sweet cider and cakes for late comers), they endured the lack of custom with fortitude, not to say indifference.  But in the mornings her soft eyes looked heavy, and once, as she was passing my bench deep in thought, I surprised a look of blank terror on her face.  One can understand that even a millionaire’s daughter might spend sleepless nights brooding over a failure.  But that look of mortal dread!  How well I know it!  How often have I seen it, preceding some sordid or brave tragedy of want and wretchedness in Our Square!  What should it mean, though, on Barbran’s sunny face?  Puzzling over the question I put it to the Bonnie Lassie.

“Read me a riddle, O Lady of the Wise Heart.  Of what is a child of fortune, young, strong, and charming, afraid?”

At the time we were passing the house in which the insecticidal Angel of Death takes carefully selected and certified lodgers.

“I know whom you mean,” said the Bonnie Lassie, pointing up to the little dormer window which was Barbran’s outlook on life.  “Interpret me a signal.  What do you see up there?”

“It appears to be a handkerchief pasted to the window,” said I adjusting my glasses.

“Upside down,” said the Bonnie Lassie.

“How can a handkerchief be upside down?” I inquired, in what was intended to be a tone of sweet reasonableness.

Contempt was all that it brought me.  “Metaphorically, of course!  It’s a signal of distress.”

“In what distress can Barbran be?”

“In what kind of distress are most people who live next under the roof in Our Square?”

“She’s doing that just to get into our atmosphere.  She told me so herself.  A millionaire’s daughter—­”

“Do millionaires’ daughters wash their own handkerchiefs and paste them on windows to dry?  Does any woman in or out of Our Square ever soak her own handkerchiefs in her own washbowl except when she’s desperately saving pennies?  Did you ever wash one single handkerchief in your rooms, Dominie?”

“Certainly not.  It isn’t manly.  Then you think she isn’t a millionairess?”

“Look at her shoes when next you see her,” answered the Bonnie Lassie conclusively. “I think the poor little thing has put her every cent in the world into her senseless cellar, and she’s going under.”

“But, good Heavens!” I exclaimed.  “Something has got to be done.”

“It’s going to be.”

“Who’s going to do it?”

“Me,” returned the Bonnie Lassie, who is least grammatical when most purposeful.

“Then,” said I, “the Fates may as well shut up shop and Providence take a day off; the universe has temporarily changed its management.  Can I help?”

The Bonnie Lassie focused her gaze in a peculiar manner upon the exact center of my countenance.  A sort of fairy grin played about her lips.  “I wonder if—­No,” she sighed.  “No.  I don’t think it would do, Dominie.  Anyway, I’ve got six without you.”