this be my tea
party?" he suggested.

"Miss Falconer will be delighted," said Lady Claire mendaciously.

The traces of that delight, however, lay beneath so well schooled an
exterior that they were decidedly non-apparent. Nor did Robert
Falconer's mien reveal any hint of joy when he returned to the hotel
and found the two ladies starting with Billy. He joined them with
rather the air of a watch dog, but that air soon wore away during
the long drive under the spell of young Hill's frank friendliness
and gay good humor. For Billy was extravagantly in spirits.
Excitement stirred in him like wine; his blood was on fire with
thoughts of the evening.

"It's the fool _lark_ of the thing," he said, half apologetically,
to Falconer's wonder when the two young men were alone for a minute
on the Gezireh verandas. "Didn't you ever want to be a pirate?"

The red-headed young man nodded. "Yes, but this business doesn't
make me feel like a pirate--more like a second-story man!"

"I've left letters with Fritzi Baroff," said Hill, "and if we're not
back by morning, she's to go to the authorities with them."

"That won't do us any good," said the Englishman grimly.

But after the ladies returned it was a very merry-seeming tea party.
Even Miss Falconer unbent to the artist, as she persisted in calling
Billy, though he had dutifully enlightened her that engineering was
his true and proper life work, and art but a random diversion, and
she promised to show him the sketches which she had been making,
and piled him with questions about his mysterious America.

And Lady Claire was very prettily animated, and rallied Falconer
upon his absent-mindedness and told Billy tales of her English home
and how her father had threatened to change the name of the Hall to
_Maedchenheim_ because there were five daughters of them. "_Five_
girls near an age, Mr. Hill, and all poor as church mice!" she had
blithely asserted.

But from what Billy heard of balls and hunters and "seasons," he
gleaned that being poor as church mice, for these five titled gi