"I shall bring him home with me," Mrs. McAlister wrote. "He oughtn't to go back into camp, this fall; and the doctor says that the long rest will be the best tonic he can have, for he's been working altogether too hard. If he is able, we shall start for home, next week, and get there by the twenty-fifth."
Hope sang blithely to herself, all that day, and even Phebe was moved into a more agreeable mood than was her wont. Allyn took a more materialistic view of the situation.
"Uncle Archie's going to get well," he remarked to Billy. "Now he can bring me nonner engine."
For two days, the McAlister household felt that it was living in an atmosphere of perpetual sunshine. Then the clouds fell again. It was one Saturday morning. Theodora was at her desk, straightening out the account of Mr. Huntington's weekly sales, Hubert was playing football, and Hope had gone to market, taking Allyn with her. Out on the lawn west of the house, Phebe and Isabel St. John were playing tennis and wrangling loudly over the score. Left to himself in the house, Billy threw aside his book, took up his crutches, and went away to the barn, where Dr. McAlister had given up an old harness closet for his use in developing his pictures. It opened out of the barn not far from the stalls where Vigil and Prince were kept; but it was easily accessible and sufficiently roomy, and Billy had accepted the doctor's offer eagerly.
Once shut up in the dark in company with his ruby lantern, Billy fell to work on a picture of Allyn, taken only the day before. So absorbed was he that it was only vaguely that he heard the voices of Phebe and Isabel in the barn close at hand. The murmur went on for some moments, broken by girlish gigglings and little squeals of merriment. Suddenly there came another squeal, louder, this time, and more earnest; there was an interchange of swift, low words, and then silence fell, and Billy dismissed the incident from his mind.
The picture proved refractory and refused to come out. Then at length Billy gave it up in despair, threw away the developing fluid, cast the plate into a pile of similar failures, took up his crutches, and started for the house again. On the way, he met Phebe and Isabel. They looked at him furtively as he passed.
"What's up, Phebe?" he asked.
"Nothing. I only thought you looked tired," she replied, with unusual thoughtfulness.
"So I am, of doing nothing. Come in and play casino with me."
"Can't," Phebe said hastily. "We'd like to, Billy; but there's something else we've got to do."