The Phantom Treasure

Miss Hilliard, you know, and some way, I haven't felt like writing about some things that I have really wanted to tell you, like how I felt to be in my mothe

d before you fill up the summer with other things. Then I can show you everything an

alked to him alone. I've been too timid to ask, for one thing; then he is busy about the place, and then I do

t what anybody might know. You will "use judgment" what to

is so odd. You will have to see her to appreciate her. She is the real housekeeper

nt on a little visit and keeps staying. Cousin Di worries about it, though I'm sure I don't know why. Two of her friends from Albany have been here this week and they have had a fine time. Unc

Pieter looked at me one time, at dinner, and said, "You need not hurry about lessons, Diana. Jannet looks as if she has had about enou

Most of the girls I know that amou

Whatever you have to do, keep at it, if you want to put it through. But we sh

hen I said, "Miss Hilliard is the one who has taken good care of me for all these years." I did not mean it for a "dig" at him, since of c

ery soon," he answered, "an

I reached my room, and wrote the conversation to Miss Hilliard. And I've wished ever since tha

tle queer, for he makes it up to me by being extra nice. He is Andrew Van Meter and is somewhere around thirty years old, perhaps older, and was in the war. He was shell-shocked and wounded, but won't talk about it. He

l the first money in the family. My grandfather was a sort of "gentleman farmer" and had "investments;" and Uncle Pieter got through college early and lived in Albany with his family until his father wanted him to come out and run this place,-a

Clyde. I am getting well acquainted with Nell Clyde, who lives nearest of any of the young folks around here. Oh, it's so different, Lina, and I haven't begun to tell you the half! We have a family ghost, two or three of them, perhaps, and whatever it is, I'

tation hours. But for some reason, I don't get half as much done. Perhaps I was a little ti

or it, and really, Lina, I could not bring myself to leave right now. Don't say that to

everything, and that I've been having a great time, riding all over the place, and the country, and getting acquainted with people. I'll write you again after you are home. Do write ag

Hilliard, busy with the last days of school, was relieved to find that there was no need to worry about the environment of her young protegée. Matters could rest where they were for the present. She had received no furt

office of a lawyer in Albany, a gentleman of whom she had been told, prominent in the place and of a wide acquaintance. Brie

d of mine, who knew nothing of this family, has just been discovered to be Mr. Van Meter's niece. There is some suggestion of a change of guardianship, to which I will not agree unless it is for the good of my ward. I rather think t

oking out for himself, but that can be said of many businessmen. I have never heard of anything dishonorable in connection with his transactions. To tell the truth, he seems to me like a disappointed and unhappy man. What there is back of that I do not know, unless it is the health of his son who

and only just met his son and the cousin who i

give a cheerful atmosphere, needed particularly because his marriage was given up after the war. You need

ain now, but I felt that I wanted some assurance in regard to the family with who

pecially interested in Jannet. "Yes, Jannet's people seem to be all that we could desire," she reported. Yet she was none the less interested in hearing what Jannet had to say about the household, and wondered over a

might have been very much interested in it, especially in one bit of information