Several uneventful days passed after the departure of the others. It was very hot and the girls kept indoors until after sunset. But it was a dull, dispiriting time, and one morning they decided to take a spin in the "Comet," leaving Mr. Campbell at home to look after things. They had hardly gone when he was summoned to Tokyo by a messenger, and there was no one but the servants left in the house.

The girls motored into town and spent the morning shopping. From one curio shop to another they wandered in the quest of nothing except diversion.

"There is no end to the beautiful things here," sighed Mary, wishing in her heart that she could carry the most beautiful and priceless thing in Tokyo home to her mother.

"Yes, everything is beautiful except the weather," remarked Billie, pointing to the black clouds which had gathered while they were in a shop. "We are going to have one of those red-letter storms, Mary. I think we'd better hurry home as fast as we can."

But the "Comet," who never had any luck all the time he was in Japan, proceeded to burst one of his tires and the explosion mingled threateningly with a low roll of thunder in the distance.

"We'd better take him to a garage and go back in a 'riksha," announced Billie, much annoyed. "Poor old 'Comet,' it wasn't his fault, but the prologues of these storms do put one in a bad temper."

"They frighten me," said Mary. "They give me evil forebodings."

The "Comet" was accordingly left at the garage to be repaired, and the girls were well on their way home in a jinriksha before anything worse had happened than rumblings and strange mutterings at what seemed a great distance away. It sometimes takes hours for a great storm in Japan to reach a head; which, in a way, is rather fortunate, because it gives people a chance to prepare for the struggle. A house is usually completely closed with storm shutters. Not even the smallest opening is left, through which the demon wind can find its way and so carry off the roof, or even the house itself. Every detachable object out of doors is taken inside. The gardener is seen hurrying about protecting his most valuable plants, and by the time the storm bursts upon the scene, filled with demoniacal shrieks and howls like an army of barbarians pursuing the enemy, it finds its victims prepared for the attack.

When the 'riksha turned in at the Campbell gate, it had grown so dark that only the dim outlines of the house were visible at the end of the driveway. No one saw them arrive. The servants were probably at the back putting on the storm shutters, which were all in place at the front.

Billie invited the 'riksha man to go around to the servants' quarters and wait until the storm had passed, but he nodded cheerfully and took his way down the road.

"Let's go in by the passage door," suggested Mary. "Everything is closed up here."

Billie followed her wearily. The heat and oppression were almost beyond endurance. She felt she might be suffocated at any moment. It was like trying to breathe under a feather mattress or in a total vacuum, for that matter.

"Shall we put on our kimonos and lie on the floor in the library?" she suggested as they slipped into the passage. And this they accordingly did without another word or a moment's delay. It was too hot to think or sleep or eat or speak. All they desired was to stretch out on the rug in a cool dark room and keep perfectly still.

There was a deadly quiet in the house when presently two little kimonoed forms stole through the halls and crept to the library door. Billie felt for the knob in the darkness and turned it. The door was locked. In the dense atmosphere it was difficult for them to realize what this meant at first.

"Mary, it's—it's the-what-do-you-call-'em," said Billie incoherently.

Mary nodded silently. She might have shrieked her answer aloud, for the storm had arrived with a great howling of wind and rain, and with flashes of lightning followed by repeated and deafening cannonades of thunder.

The rain rattled on the roof like iron and all the demons in bedlam seemed to be besieging the house. Then a most sickening thing happened. The floor appeared to be heaving under their feet. Doors all over the house banged to with loud reports like revolvers shooting off. There was a crash in the library, a loud cry from within, the door flew open and a figure rushed past. Mary, kneeling on the floor at the threshold, involuntarily reached out her hands and seized the flying skirts of the apparition, or whatever it was, which disappeared like a shadow through the passage door, leaving Mary still holding the substance of the shadow which seemed to be the skirt she had grasped.

A second shock followed almost immediately, less violent than the first but quite as sickening. For one instant the house tossed and pitched like a ship on a choppy sea. Then it settled down on its foundations. Most Japanese houses are built on wooden supports, stout square pillars rounded off at the base and resting in a round socket of stone. This gives a certain elasticity for resisting shocks which a firmly built house would not endure.

The girls lay side by side on the floor of the passage, too frightened to speak. There is a horror about an earthquake that is indescribable to those who have never felt it; a feeling of sickening inefficiency and helplessness.

After a while they plucked up courage to rise and totter weakly into the library, where Billie, her hand shaking with nervous excitement, struck a match and lit a candle. The room was in dire confusion. Chairs were upset, books had fallen off the shelves and lay scattered about the floor, and the iron safe had crashed over on its face. On the desk and the floor about it were numbers of loose sheets of paper and a narrow roll of tracing paper, which had uncoiled itself and lay half on the desk, half on the floor like a long white serpent.

Mechanically they began to put things to rights. Mary gathered up the books and set them back on the shelves and Billie stood the chairs on their legs and collected the papers. They were not important ones, she knew, only decoys, as her father had called them. In the mean time the house rocked in the clutches of the storm.

"I don't know why we bother to do this," said Billie laughing hysterically. "We may be flying through the air any minute ourselves along with the chairs and papers and everything else."

"The storm at Nikko was mere child's play to this; just an infant babe in arms," answered Mary, weeping softly while she worked.

It seemed better to be doing something than to sit still and listen to the terrifying fury of the tempest, as again and again it hurled itself against the house.

"It wouldn't have done any good even if we had caught the thief or spy or whatever he is," observed Billie after a while. "There would have been no one to help us."

Suddenly Mary's perturbed mind harked back to what had happened in the hall.

"Billie," she cried, "it wasn't a man; it was a woman. That skirt I caught—that—that something—where is it?"

"What are you talking about, Mary?"

"I tell you I caught hold of something. It came off in my hands."

She ran into the hall and, groping about on the floor, presently found what seemed to be a long coat. Rushing back she spread it on the desk. Billie held the candle high and the two girls stood gazing at it for some moments without speaking. Then Billie slowly placed the candle on the desk and sat down.

"I don't understand, Billie," said Mary, clasping and unclasping her hands in her excitement and surprise, "it's Nancy's blue raincoat, but—but I don't understand."

Billie covered her eyes with one hand as if she would like to hide from Mary what they might tell of her feelings and thoughts. There was nothing to say. It was Nancy's blue raincoat, but she refused to think what the explanation might be.

After a long time, it seemed, O'Haru came into the room. She was amazed to find the girls in the library until they explained how they had just escaped the storm.

"Oh, much terrible," ejaculated the housekeeper. "Much terrible more worse than since," from which they gathered that it was one of the worst storms ever seen in Tokyo. O'Haru brought in lights and presently returned at the head of a procession of maids with trays of food; though whether it was luncheon or supper time it was impossible to tell. The clocks had all stopped in the earthquake and it was still as black as night. It might have been midnight or midday for all they knew.

The girls preferred to remain in the library, which seemed to them more protection than the other rooms, and O'Haru drew up three tables and arranged the trays with great deftness and celerity.

"Papa didn't come?" asked Billie, noticing the third table.

"No, honorable lady."

"For whom is the other tray, then?"

"Mees Brown," answered O'Haru, rather surprised.

"But she is in the mountains," said Billie, growing very red and uneasy. "Oh, Nancy, Nancy," she groaned inwardly, "could it have really been you and are you out there in the typhoon?"

"Pardon grant," said O'Haru. "Mees Brown arriving at morning. Mees Brown within."

"I think not, O'Haru," said Billie.

"Her honorable rainy coat," said Onoye, pointing to the fated blue mackintosh.

"Mary, what shall I say?" asked Billie in a low voice. "I don't know what to do."

"Ask them questions," said Mary.

From Onoye they gathered that Miss Brown had arrived soon after Mr. Campbell had left the house, and had gone straight to her room. She was very tired, she said, and would lie down until lunch time. Then she had gone to the library. Just before the storm they had tried to go in and close the shutters, but had found the door locked.

Billie formed a resolution to protect Nancy no matter what was to pay.

"It wasn't the real Miss Brown," she announced firmly. "It was some one dressed like her. The real Miss Brown is far away from here in the mountains."

The two Japanese women withdrew presently, and if they felt any curiosity about Nancy's strange appearance at the villa, they were careful to hide it.

The storm lasted all night and many times the two girls lying side by side on Billie's bed were prepared for the house to fall on top of them or to be carried away on the wind like chips of wood. But toward morning the wind died down and while the rain continued to flood the earth, they knew the worst was over. Billie drew back the bolts of their storm shutters and the fresh air came pouring in to revive their drooping spirits.

"Mary," she said, creeping back to bed, "I'll never believe it was Nancy. No, never, never."

At last they went to sleep, and when they waked the rain had ceased altogether. The lawn in front of the house was a muddy lake and many trees lay prone on the ground. It was a scene of devastation that greeted Mr. Campbell as he hurried home at daylight in a 'riksha. He had dispatched a messenger in the night, paying a large fee, to see if the girls were safe at home and had spent the night in Tokyo with Mr. Buxton.

It was not until much later in the day that Billie plucked up courage to inform her father of what had happened.

"Why on earth didn't you tell me about it immediately?" he exclaimed. "The best way to settle that, is to telegraph to Cousin Helen right off."

But with the "Comet" in town and Komatsu in the mountains this was not so easy to manage, and it looked as if Mr. Campbell would have to walk back to Tokyo. He had got half way down the drive, in fact, when a messenger appeared running at full speed as fast as a horse; such is the endurance of a Japanese runner. He had been sent with a telegram from Mr. Campbell's office, but it had been written in Japanese and had to be translated.

Mr. Campbell hurried back to the house and called Onoye:

"Read this for me if you can," he ordered.

Onoye looked at the strange script a long time. Then she read slowly:

"'O'Nainci San gone Tokyo. No honorable telling before for why she make those journey—'"

There were a few more words, but Onoye had reached the limit of her knowledge of the English language.

Mr. Campbell sighed. Billie was the only girl in the world who wasn't any trouble, he thought.



CHAPTER XXI.

CONUNDRUMS AND ANSWERS.

"I tell you Nancy is on her way, now, Papa," said Billie emphatically. "She would never have had time to get here as soon as yesterday. The storm would have delayed her. She couldn't have reached here."

Mr. Campbell shook his head anxiously as he paced up and down the piazza waiting for the 'riksha the messenger was to send back from Tokyo.

Billie's faith in her friend was wonderful. He admired it, but he was obliged to say he felt rather skeptical himself, all things considered.

"There comes the 'riksha," announced Mary at last.

Mr. Campbell went into the house for his hat and cane and Billie followed him. She looked so pale and miserable that he stooped to kiss her and then led her into the library.

"Come in here a moment, little daughter," he said, "and we'll talk things over a bit."

"How are you going to find her, Papa?" Billie asked, wiping away the tears that would well in her eyes every few minutes and trickle down her cheeks.

"I'll do everything within human power. The police are excellent and so are the detectives."

"Why do you think she ran away?" sobbed Billie, breaking down entirely.

"I don't know, my child. I can't make out what the reason was and we'd never get anywhere by guessing."

"Papa, do you think she could have gone to that widow? I never told you, but she did once before when we had a quarrel. She was awfully sorry after the first night and came back."

Mr. Campbell gave a low whistle. He had forgotten the Widow of Shanghai's very existence until that moment.

"I hope she's there. That will make it much simpler. But you mustn't take on so, little daughter. Nancy is like lots of headstrong girls. She resents criticism. Probably she had a falling out with Cousin Helen and ran away—"

"I did run away," said a voice at the door, "but that wasn't the reason."

"Nancy!" cried Billie and the two girls rushed into each other's arms and embraced like sisters long separated. In the doorway stood Mary and Mr. Buxton. Mary's face was beaming with joy and Mr. Buxton wore his old expression of humorous tolerance.

"Where did you find her, Buxton?" asked Mr. Campbell gravely.

"I didn't find her. She found me this morning at an unconscionably early hour, too, and a fine time we've had of it, I can tell you. We've chased a widow back to Shanghai and we've placed a fanatic under bond for good behavior."

Nancy laughed her old natural laugh with a ripple of gaiety in it. Her eyes were sparkling and the color flooded her cheeks. She was prettier than ever, it seemed, and all because she was so happy! Her jaunty little traveling hat was over one eye and her dress was crushed and wrinkled, but her charming face was radiant.

"The morning we left for the mountains," she began, "two letters came for me by mail but I didn't read them until I got on the train. One of them was from that awful woman and it frightened me terribly. It seemed cordial enough on the surface but my eyes have been opened to her. I don't know just what she is, but she is dangerous I am certain,—like a cat ready to spring. She said she had taken such a fancy to me that she must see me again and she thought it would be advisable for me to come to her home at once. The other letter was from that horrid Yoritomo and he simply threatened in so many words to blow up the house and everybody in it unless I listened to him. I didn't think much about the letters until we were settled in the hotel. Then I began to get more and more uneasy and I thought the best thing for me to do was to come back to Tokyo and see Mr. Campbell. I knew, of course, that Miss Helen would never let me go alone, so I just ran away."

"And very glad we are to see you, Miss Nancy," broke in Mr. Campbell in the tone of one who felt enormously relieved.

"We were all night on the train," continued Nancy. "The storm had washed the track away in places and we had to wait many times while it was repaired. As soon as I arrived, I took a 'riksha to Mr. Buxton's lodgings and then we went to see Mme. Fontaine and Yoritomo—"

"Oh, that widow woman," interrupted Mr. Buxton. "She's a sly one, I can tell you. As we entered the front door, she departed at the back. We left several policemen waiting for her to return but I wouldn't be surprised if she were well on her way to Shanghai by now."

"I don't understand," said Billie.

"The time we quarreled, Billie, and I behaved like such a silly little goose," Nancy explained, "you remember I went to see her. I don't know what made me do it, except that I wanted to air my troubles. I've been so unhappy since, that I feel years older now. I was only a child then, but I'm quite an old person now. She talked to me a long time that night and got me all stirred up and believing that I had been badly treated. It was not what she really said but what she hinted. She seemed to know a good deal about Mr. Campbell's work. She implied that what he was doing for the Japanese government was disloyal to America. I was so fascinated with the way she put things and the way she looked at me, too, that I didn't seem to have any power over myself any more. It was like being hypnotized, I suppose. It came into my head to write you a terrible letter, Billie,—" Nancy's eyes filled with tears and her voice choked—"I can hardly think of it now without crying. She knew I was writing it but she didn't ask what was in it, only occasionally, while I wrote, she would look over at me and say 'Poor darling! Poor pretty darling!' After I got to bed, I came to my senses and began to realize what I had done. I was terribly frightened and unhappy and in the middle of the night I crept into the drawing-room, tore up the letter and threw the pieces into a vase. Next morning, you remember, I came home. But the letter was so heavy on my conscience, I couldn't be happy. I had a feeling it had never been destroyed and would somehow get to you, Billie. I wrote to the widow and asked her to send me back the pieces if she could find them, so that I could burn them myself. In her reply, she simply said the vase was empty and I gradually began to understand that she had got the letter and intended to keep it. There was a threatening sound to the note, and she ended by asking to borrow my blue raincoat. I had to let her have it, but I knew she didn't want it for any good reason and I was more and more miserable. I began to pray that it wouldn't rain. People don't wear raincoats in good weather. I tried to argue with myself about her reasons for wanting my raincoat and even now I don't know what they were unless it was to involve me in something. But we've frightened her away, anyhow, and she can have the raincoat if she'll only stay."

"She certainly did want to get you into a peck of trouble, Miss Nancy," said Mr. Campbell bringing the famous raincoat from the passage where it hung on the hat rack. "Here's your coat. She left it behind as a souvenir yesterday when she broke into the house to steal my drawings. I fooled her, though," he added, smiling sweetly. "If she thinks she can ever make anything out of those papers, she'll soon find she has been losing time."

"It's the third time she's been here masquerading as you, Nancy." broke in Billie. "She must have managed the disguise perfectly because the servants were fooled each time."

"She did," said Mary. "I asked Onoye exactly what she looked like. She evidently had on a brown curly wig and a hat like Nancy's with a blue veil around her head."

At this juncture in the conversation, Onoye announced a visitor who proved to be a detective. He was a quiet, self-contained young Japanese who spoke excellent English. He had been sent out in a motor car by the Chief of Police to find out all he could from the Americans regarding Mme. Fontaine.

The Widow of Shanghai, he informed them, was the child of a Russian father and a Japanese mother. She was considered to be one of the most accomplished and brilliant spies in the Orient and could assume almost any disguise and speak most languages. It was a pity a woman of such wonderful talents should stoop to work like that, and the strange part of it was that she was sometimes treacherous to Russia and in favor of Japan: so that it was difficult to tell for which side she worked. Just now her sympathies were with Russia, since she was trying to get plans for harbor defenses in Japan. The Chief of Police wished to thank Miss Brown in behalf of the City of Tokyo for driving the so-called Mme. Fontaine out of town. She had entered it so quietly that until that very morning it was not known that Mme. Fontaine and the famous Russian spy were one and the same person.

"Of course it was she who was in here the night of your birthday party. Papa," said Billie. "I must have shot two people instead of one."

This was actually the case, as Onoye explained to her later. Onoye had hidden herself behind the curtain that night to watch the couples strolling about in the moonlight. Mme. Fontaine came very swiftly into the room and blew out the lights. She carried a little electric dark lantern. Onoye was too frightened to make her presence known, and had crept along the edge of the room hoping to reach the door. Then Billie had come in and somehow they had all drifted together in the dark and the pistol had gone off. The bullet must have pierced Mme. Fontaine's arm and lodged in Onoye's wrist. How she managed to hide the wound with a scarf until she got her long wrap from one of the bedrooms was a marvel to them all.

"Anyhow the mystery is all cleared away now," cried Nancy joyfully. "I suppose you must have thought strange things about me, Mr. Campbell?"

"We had every reason to think them, Miss Nancy, but this loyal young person here wouldn't let us. It looked like some pretty convincing evidence for a while, but she wouldn't budge from the stand she had taken."

Once again the two friends embraced. They were radiantly happy. It was just as if Nancy had died and come to life again.

"I think I've learned a good lesson," she admitted at last. "It all happened because I wanted to be silly and romantic and meet people in the garden and write notes."

"People?" asked Mary.

Nancy laughed and dimpled in her old charming way and everybody laughed, even the reserved young detective. Old Nedda, who had followed them into the room, carne tottering over to where Nancy sat beside Billie. The aged animal whined and wagged her tail, as if she, too, wished to take part in the general thanksgiving.

"Dearest old great-grandmama," cried Nancy, kneeling beside the aged pug and hiding her face in the tawny coat, "are you really glad to see me, too?"



CHAPTER XXII.

GOOD-BYE, SUMMER.

A string of glowing lanterns festooned the piazza of the Campbell villa, while within the warm reflection of wood fires and shaded lamps made each window a square of hospitable brightness. The house inside was a blaze of color. Splendid bunches of scarlet maple leaves and chrysanthemums of amazing size and beauty filled the vases and jars.

The Motor Maids, dressed in their very best party frocks, had gathered in the drawing-room early before the arrival of the three guests. Each maid sat in a large chair and gazed about her from side to side. The riot of color, the scarlets and oranges, the tawny browns, pale pinks and delicate yellows seemed to bewilder them.

"I suppose it wasn't truly Japanese to decorate a room with all these masses of flowers and leaves," said Billie. "But I don't care. It's the most gorgeous thing I've ever seen and since this is our last night here we want to make it a festive one."

Their last night! Was it possible that time had slipped by so fast? Here it was already November, the season of greatest beauty in Japan, when Nature has dipped her brush into the most brilliant colors on the palette and touched the foliage with red and gold, the skies with deepest blue, and the chrysanthemums, favorite flower of the Emperor, with every gorgeous shade.

After a good rest in the mountains broken by excursions to various interesting places about the country, the Campbell party had returned to Tokyo in time to marvel at the wonders of the chrysanthemum festival, which is a national affair.

Away off at the other side of the world a certain High School was now in full swing. But even Mary Price had lost all scruples concerning her education.

"I don't care," she remarked recklessly. "I think all this beauty is just as good for the mind as bare plastered walls and plain geometry."

"It's better," exclaimed Nancy, "because it makes one so much happier to look at chrysanthemums and red maples than to try and understand why the sum of the three angles of a triangle of any old size must always equal two right angles. What makes one happy is far more educational than what makes one aggravated."

Here was a Pagan theory that Elinor felt inclined to doubt.

"We shall have to study double time all during the Christmas holidays," she said.

"It will be rather fun, I think," put in Billie, always the optimist of the quartette. "We'll all just have a small private school of four and jump in and work together. To me, working together is almost as nice as playing together. I suppose I appreciate it more than the rest of you because I had to work and play alone for so many years."

"Billie, you are a perfect dear," ejaculated Nancy. "You furnish all the amusement and fun and thank us for sharing it with you."

Billie looked as pleased and happy as if she had never had a compliment before in her life. The joy of having regained Nancy after that brief eclipse into shadow was still too recent to be forgotten. The two girls exchanged one of those telegraphic glances of intimate friends who need no words to express their meaning.

"We've had a wonderful time," broke in Mary. "There is something about the land that makes one forget the realities. If poor little Kenkyo hadn't died—"

"Be careful! Onoye is in the next room," interrupted Billie, lifting a warning finger.

Onoye had indeed been the wife of Yoritomo as Billie had guessed. No doubt it was poor old O'Haru who had thrown the stone into the summer house that day. Billie had mercifully never inquired. And now the little son, for whom the two women had yearned with a passion that is extraordinarily deep in Japanese women, had been gathered to his forefathers. Onoye was dumb and silent with misery during his brief illness. When he died, she had disappeared for a few days and returned at last calm and still. No one had seen her shed a tear. Yoritomo, it was said, was stricken with the wildest grief. But sorrow had cleared his brain and brought him to his senses. He had made a really manly apology to Mr. Campbell and had even asked that Onoye might be restored to him. But this was not to be. Miss Campbell had taken Onoye under her wing.

"I want you to go back to America with me and be educated, child," said the kind little lady, "and after a few years, you may return to Japan and teach the women here how to be independent."

Onoye had joyfully and gratefully consented to this arrangement, providing she might act as Miss Campbell's maid in the meantime.

O'Haru had made an heroic effort to be glad, also. She would continue to be the Spears' housekeeper, she said, and wait for her daughter to return to Japan with "muchly honorable learning."

During the hot weeks when Miss Campbell and the Motor Maids were sojourning in the mountains, old "great grandmama Nedda" had also passed into another sphere. Her ending was peaceful, they said; she had slipped quietly away one day at sunset. The faithful servants buried the gentle creature in the garden not far from the shrine of the Compassionate God. When the girls returned they set up a little wooden monument in her memory on which Mary printed in India ink the following inscription:

"NEDDA"

Died August 27, 19—

Aged 21.

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting And cometh from afar."

"Here comes someone," announced Billie, peering from the window of the drawing-room. "It's Mr. Buxton, I think, and he's heavily laden with parcels, apparently."

In another moment, the bachelor himself stood in the doorway regarding the charming picture with his half-humorous, half-grave expression.

"There were only three Graces, were there not?" he asked. "I've forgotten. It's been so long since I met them. But there should have been four."

"And why not five, since you are adding to the number," asked Mary.

"Meaning for the fifth the beauteous lady who lingers in her room?" he demanded.

"She out-graces us all," exclaimed Billie. "But what did you bring with you? Do tell us. We are dying of curiosity."

The bachelor's lips twitched with a crafty smile and he shook one finger at them like the sly old comedian he was.

"Walt!" he said, disappearing into the hall and reappearing in a moment with an aged, gnarled dwarf apple tree growing in a green vase, and a lacquered box beautifully inlaid with mother-of-pearl.

"Do you think I have the ghost of a chance?" he asked them in a whisper.

The girls were consumed with giggles.

"Not the ghost," laughed Billie. "She wouldn't stay in Japan, not if you brought her all the Emperor's chrysanthemums in a single bunch."

"But what's in the box, Mr. Buxton?" demanded Nancy.

"You shall see," he answered. "Wait until the Fifth Grace appears."

"Here she is," they cried in a chorus, as Miss Campbell swept into the room, resplendent in mauve satin covered with billows of fine lace.

"Madame, you blind me with your magnificence," exclaimed the bachelor, making a low bow.

"I'm glad you like my dress," said the elegant little lady.

"It's not the dress but the eyes," he corrected her, just as Mr. Campbell, followed by Reggie Carlton and Nicholas Grimm, appeared.

"We meet to meet again," cried Nicholas, joyfully.

The two young men were sailing for America on the same ship with the Campbells, and many a long happy day they were all to have together.

"And I am to be the only figure left on the Japanese screen," said Mr. Buxton sadly. "I shall have to walk across the curved bridges alone and consume tea for two under the flowering cherry tree."

"I am afraid you will, sir," said Miss Campbell.

"Madam, permit me," he said solemnly, placing the apple tree at her feet. "Is this any inducement?"

"Not the slightest," answered Miss Helen with a laugh.

Mr. Buxton gazed sadly from one smiling face to another.

Then he opened the lacquered box and presented each of the Motor Maids with a beautiful embroidered silk robe.

"Have an empty box, then, Madam," he announced, placing the casket in her lap, and because of the riotous and unseemly laughter, no one heard her reply.

So ended the last day of the Motor Maids in their pretty Japanese villa. It was as happy and beautiful an evening as that land of flowers and hospitality could make it. We should not be sorry ourselves to linger with them on those lovely shores, but the winter is at land and the season of dreams has passed.

Komatsu and O'Haru and old Saiki, the gardener, the four little maids, the grandmothers and the children remain picturesque figures in a picturesque land; and behind them, glistening In the sunlight, looms Fujiyama, sacred mountain of dazzling whiteness and perfect beauty.

For the Motor Maids this memory will live as the type of all the experiences and scenes of fair Japan. Above the remembrance of stormy crises—within and without—of their sojourn there, rises the happy consciousness of a firmer, larger friendship which they may take with them as the choicest souvenir of the summer.

And in their homeland, if we wish, we may join them again to find what another year of life has revealed to them. In the meantime, let us anticipate the pleasure in store for us with "The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp."

END