The next link in the chain of circumstances was forged when Onoye returned from her pilgrimage.  Billie, who had drawn a stool to the window and was sitting with her face pressed against the glass, saw her walking slowly along the dripping path to the house.  The Japanese girl was looking at something she held in her free hand, an envelope undoubtedly.  Just as she reached the piazza, Onoye slipped the letter into the folds of her sash and hurried in.

Billie’s mind gave a sudden leap of conjecture but she continued to sit quietly, her face against the window, peering into the mist-hung garden.

“Funny,” she said to herself.  “It couldn’t have been a Japanese letter because those are rolled up on little sticks.”

Not long afterwards, she encountered Onoye in the passage.  The Japanese girl smiled lovingly into her face.  Little by little her feeling for Billie was growing and expanding into a real devotion,

“And I’m sure I don’t know why she should caress the hand that smote her,” Billie had thought.  “She’s a dear, faithful little soul.”

“Are you quite well again, Onoye?” she asked, pausing and slipping her arm around the Japanese girl’s shoulders.

“Yes, honorable lady.  Not any sickly arm no more.”

“And have you been writing a letter to thank the Compassionate God Jizu for your recovery?” went on Billie.

A frightened look came into Onoye’s eyes.  The English had been too much for her comprehension, but the word “letter” she had understood perfectly.

“No understand,” she said, bowing ceremoniously.  And she hastened away, leaving Billie much puzzled and rather curious, too.

The day dragged slowly on, and still the rain poured and the mist steamed and there was no relief from the circumstances of the weather.  Miss Campbell had been feeling rheumatic twinges in her “old joints,” as she called them, and remained in bed reading an agreeable novel.  Once more the four friends retired to the library where Mary read aloud and the others engaged in various characteristic pursuits.  Elinor was embroidering a royal coat-of-arms in colored silks on a cushion cover; Nancy was darning a rent in a lace flounce and Billie was darning her father’s socks.  This task she undertook each week with extraordinary cheerfulness, although Onoye had offered to do it for her, and O’Haru had almost taken the darning needle and egg from her by force.

As the hands of the clock neared four, Nancy rose.

“Go on with your reading, Mary,” she said.  “I need some more thread and I shall have to look for it.  So don’t wait.”

“What number do you want?” asked Elinor.

Nancy looked annoyed.

“Oh, something quite fine.  I know you haven’t it, Elinor.”

“Will a hundred do?” asked Elinor, extracting the spool from her neat sewing bag.

“That’s too fine.”

“I have all sizes here.”