“No, goosie,” said she fondly. “It is Billy.”

“And the moon?—”

“That was Billy and not Hepburn. I was fooled too.”

“But Billy hasn’t a cent.”

“No, but she has faith in his future, and she says she has never loved any one else since she first knew him, years ago.”

“Ethel Vernon,” said I. “As a character reader I am not a success. I would have sworn that it lay between Hepburn and Sibthorp.”

“You must remember that Cherry is not a character in one of your stories but a real girl,” said Ethel.

“Well, I wish her joy of her long wait.”

“It won’t be as long a wait as it would be if she had rejected him,” was Ethel’s Hibernian response.