Eliza began work the next day, and Billy did indeed soon find herself “playing” under Bertram's watchful insistence. She resumed her music, and brought out of exile the unfinished song. With Bertram she took drives and walks; and every two or three days she went to see Aunt Hannah and Marie. She was pleasantly busy, too, with plans for her coming trip; and it was not long before even the remorseful Bertram had to admit that Billy was looking and appearing quite like her old self.
At the Annex Billy found Calderwell and Arkwright, one day. They greeted her as if she had just returned from a far country.
“Well, if you aren't the stranger lady,” began Calderwell, looking frankly pleased to see her. “We'd thought of advertising in the daily press somewhat after this fashion: 'Lost, strayed, or stolen, one Billy; comrade, good friend, and kind cheerer-up of lonely hearts. Any information thankfully received by her bereft, sorrowing friends.'”
Billy joined in the laugh that greeted this sally, but Arkwright noticed that she tried to change the subject from her own affairs to a discussion of the new song on Alice Greggory's piano. Calderwell, however, was not to be silenced.
“The last I heard of this elusive Billy,” he resumed, with teasing cheerfulness, “she was running down a certain lost calory that had slipped away from her husband's breakfast, and—”
Billy wheeled sharply.
“Where did you get hold of that?” she demanded.
“Oh, I didn't,” returned the man, defensively. “I never got hold of it at all. I never even saw the calory—though, for that matter, I don't think I should know one if I did see it! What we feared was, that, in hunting the lost calory, you had lost yourself, and—” But Billy would hear no more. With her disdainful nose in the air she walked to the piano.
“Come, Mr. Arkwright,” she said with dignity. “Let's try this song.”
Arkwright rose at once and accompanied her to the piano.