“Since you all hate and disapprove of me, I do not wish to stay with you any longer.  You have been anything but a friend to me, but I will not say anything more about that.  I will only say that I can never forgive what you said to me the other day.  I think I have outgrown you.  You are just a child still and it will be a long time before you understand the ways of the world, or sympathize with me when I say that I want to broaden my life.  Now, Mme. Fontaine, who knows everything, has promised—­”

Here the letter broke off.

On the other side of the sheet were some more fragments of paper carefully pieced together.

“—­do not wish to stay because—­father’s work—­he should not—­Mme. Fontaine thinks—­”

Billie folded the paper and slipped it into her pocket.  Tears were rolling down her cheeks and she felt suddenly stiff and tired.  Komatsu regarded her from a distance with respectful sympathy.

“Back home,” she ordered, and all the way she indulged in the bitterest weeping she had ever known in her life.

“Nancy, Nancy, how could you?” she kept repeating to herself.

Before she reached the house she dried her eyes and leaning out of the ’riksha let the rain beat against her face.

“I must think of something to tell them,” she said to herself.  “What did she mean about Papa’s work?”

Again Billie read the last part of the note.

“I believe it’s that woman who made her do this,” she cried out suddenly.  “She worked her up to the point—­’broaden her life’—­’papa’s work,’ and all that.  How could Nancy have thought of such things?  And then after Nancy wrote the letter she repented—­or perhaps the widow wouldn’t let her send it—­but how did it happen to be pieced together like this?”

It was all very puzzling and strange.  Billie wanted time to think about it and work it out in her own mind, and she was sorry when at last Komatsu came to a full stop at their own front door.  Slowly she descended and walked into the house.  Suddenly there was a cry of joy from the back.  It was the other girls rushing to meet Nancy who had not come, Billie thought miserably.

And, lo, it was Nancy herself, laughing and crying at once and embracing her beloved Billie, as if they had been separated for a year and a day.

“Where did you come from?” Billie managed to gasp in a bewildered voice.

“I got back a little while ago and oh, I’ve been so homesick.  Are you glad to see me, Billie, dearest?”

“I should think I was,” said Billie, kissing Nancy’s soft round cheek.  “It seems an age instead of just one night.”

“Mme. Fontaine invited me to make her a visit,” went on Nancy, “but—­but I was too lonesome—­I never slept a wink last night.”

“We are all of us quite jealous of you, Nancy,” put in Mary, who, with Elinor, had come upon the scene a moment before.

Billie put her hand in her pocket and felt the pieced-together letter.  It almost seemed like a bad dream now.