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Miss Billy's Decision

by Eleanor H. Porter · English · Gutenberg #362 · 418,615 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Miss Billy's Decision

Author: Eleanor H. Porter


        
Release date: July 11, 2008 [eBook #362]
                Most recently updated: March 9, 2018

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/362

Credits: Produced by Charles Keller, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MISS BILLY'S DECISION ***




Produced by Charles Keller





MISS BILLY'S DECISION

By Eleanor H. Porter

Author of “Miss Billy,” etc.


TO My Cousin Helen


                                        CONTENTS
          CHAPTER
          I.      CALDERWELL DOES SOME TALKING
          II.     AUNT HANNAH GETS A LETTER
          III.    BILLY AND BERTRAM
          IV.     FOR MARY JANE
          V.      MARIE SPEAKS HER MIND
          VI.     AT THE SIGN OF THE PINK
          VII.    OLD FRIENDS AND NEW
          VIII.   M. J. OPENS THE GAME
          IX.     A RUG, A PICTURE, AND A GIRL AFRAID
          X.      A JOB FOR PETE--AND FOR BERTRAM
          XI.     A CLOCK AND AUNT HANNAH
          XII.    SISTER KATE
          XIII.   CYRIL AND A WEDDING
          XIV.    M. J. MAKES ANOTHER MOVE
          XV.     “MR. BILLY” AND “MISS MARY JANE”
           XVI.    A GIRL AND A BIT OF LOWESTOFT
          XVII.   ONLY A LOVE SONG, BUT--
          XVIII.  SUGARPLUMS
          XIX.    ALICE GREGGORY
          XX.     ARKWRIGHT TELLS A STORY
          XXI.    A MATTER OF STRAIGHT BUSINESS
          XXII.   PLANS AND PLOTTINGS
          XXIII.  THE CAUSE AND BERTRAM
          XXIV.   THE ARTIST AND HIS ART
          XXV.    THE OPERETTA
          XXVI.   ARKWRIGHT TELLS ANOTHER STORY
          XXVII.  THE THING THAT WAS THE TRUTH
          XXVIII. BILLY TAKES HER TURN
          XXIX.   KATE WRITES A LETTER
          XXX.    “I'VE HINDERED HIM”
           XXXI.   FLIGHT
          XXXII.  PETE TO THE RESCUE
          XXXIII. BERTRAM TAKES THE REINS





MISS BILLY'S DECISION




CHAPTER I. CALDERWELL DOES SOME TALKING


Calderwell had met Mr. M. J. Arkwright in London through a common
friend; since then they had tramped half over Europe together in a
comradeship that was as delightful as it was unusual. As Calderwell put
it in a letter to his sister, Belle:

“We smoke the same cigar and drink the same tea (he's just as much of
an old woman on that subject as I am!), and we agree beautifully on
all necessary points of living, from tipping to late sleeping in the
morning; while as for politics and religion--we disagree in those just
enough to lend spice to an otherwise tame existence.”

Farther along in this same letter Calderwell touched upon his new friend
again.

“I admit, however, I would like to know his name. To find out what that
mysterious 'M. J.' stands for has got to be pretty nearly an obsession
with me. I am about ready to pick his pocket or rifle his trunk in
search of some lurking 'Martin' or 'John' that will set me at peace. As
it is, I confess that I have ogled his incoming mail and his outgoing
baggage shamelessly, only to be slapped in the face always and
everlastingly by that bland 'M. J.' I've got my revenge, now, though. To
myself I call him 'Mary Jane'--and his broad-shouldered, brown-bearded
six feet of muscular manhood would so like to be called 'Mary Jane'!
By the way, Belle, if you ever hear of murder and sudden death in my
direction, better set the sleuths on the trail of Arkwright. Six to one
you'll find I called him 'Mary Jane' to his face!”

Calderwell was thinking of that letter now, as he sat at a small table
in a Paris café. Opposite him was the six feet of muscular manhood,
broad shoulders, pointed brown beard, and all--and he had just addressed
it, inadvertently, as “Mary Jane.”

During the brief, sickening moment of silence after the name had left
his lips, Calderwell was conscious of a whimsical realization of the
lights, music, and laughter all about him.

“Well, I chose as safe a place as I could!” he was thinking. Then
Arkwright spoke.

“How long since you've been in correspondence with members of my
family?”

“Eh?”

Arkwright laughed grimly.

“Perhaps you thought of it yourself, then--I'll admit you're capable of
it,” he nodded, reaching for a cigar. “But it so happens you hit upon my
family's favorite name for me.”

“_Mary Jane!_ You mean they actually _call_ you that?”

“Yes,” bowed the big fellow, calmly, as he struck a light.
“Appropriate!--don't you think?”

Calderwell did not answer. He thought he could not.

“Well, silence gives consent, they say,” laughed the other. “Anyhow, you
must have had _some_ reason for calling me that.”

“Arkwright, what _does_ 'M. J.' stand for?” demanded Calderwell.

“Oh, is that it?” smiled the man opposite. “Well, I'll own those
initials have been something of a puzzle to people. One man declares
they're 'Merely Jokes'; but another, not so friendly, says they stand
for 'Mostly Jealousy' of more fortunate chaps who have real names for
a handle. My small brothers and sisters, discovering, with the usual
perspicacity of one's family on such matters, that I never signed, or
called myself anything but 'M. J.,' dubbed me 'Mary Jane.' And there you
have it.”

“Mary Jane! You!”

Arkwright smiled oddly.

“Oh, well, what's the difference? Would you deprive them of their
innocent amusement? And they do so love that 'Mary Jane'! Besides,
what's in a name, anyway?” he went on, eyeing the glowing tip of the
cigar between his fingers. “'A rose by any other name--'--you've
heard that, probably. Names don't always signify, my dear fellow. For
instance, I know a 'Billy'--but he's a girl.”

Calderwell gave a sudden start.

“You don't mean Billy--Neilson?”

The other turned sharply.

“Do _you_ know Billy Neilson?”

Calderwell gave his friend a glance from scornful eyes.

“Do I know Billy Neilson?” he cried. “Does a fellow usually know the
girl he's proposed to regularly once in three months? Oh, I know I'm
telling tales out of school, of course,” he went on, in response to the
look that had come into the brown eyes opposite. “But what's the use?
Everybody knows it--that knows us. Billy herself got so she took it as
a matter of course--and refused as a matter of course, too; just as she
would refuse a serving of apple pie at dinner, if she hadn't wanted it.”

“Apple pie!” scouted Arkwright.

Calderwell shrugged his shoulders.

“My dear fellow, you don't seem to realize it, but for the last six
months you have been assisting at the obsequies of a dead romance.”

“Indeed! And is it--buried, yet?”

“Oh, no,” sighed Calderwell, cheerfully. “I shall go back one of these
days, I'll warrant, and begin the same old game again; though I will
acknowledge that the last refusal was so very decided that it's been a
year, almost, since I received it. I think I was really convinced, for
a while, that--that she didn't want that apple pie,” he finished with
a whimsical lightness that did not quite coincide with the stern lines
that had come to his mouth.

For a moment there was silence, then Calderwell spoke again.

“Where did you know--Miss Billy?”

“Oh, I don't know her at all. I know of her--through Aunt Hannah.”

Calderwell sat suddenly erect.

“Aunt Hannah! Is she your aunt, too? Jove! This _is_ a little old world,
after all; isn't it?”

“She isn't my aunt. She's my mother's third cousin. None of us have seen
her for years, but she writes to mother occasionally; and, of course,
for some time now, her letters have been running over full of Billy. She
lives with her, I believe; doesn't she?”

“She does,” rejoined Calderwell, with an unexpected chuckle. “I wonder
if you know how she happened to live with her, at first.”

“Why, no, I reckon not. What do you mean?”

Calderwell chuckled again.

“Well, I'll tell you. You, being a 'Mary Jane,' ought to appreciate it.
You see, Billy was named for one William Henshaw, her father's chum,
who promptly forgot all about her. At eighteen, Billy, being left quite
alone in the world, wrote to 'Uncle William' and asked to come and live
with him.”

“Well?”

“But it wasn't well. William was a forty-year-old widower who lived with
two younger brothers, an old butler, and a Chinese cook in one of those
funny old Beacon Street houses in Boston. 'The Strata,' Bertram called
it. Bright boy--Bertram!”

“The Strata!”

“Yes. I wish you could see that house, Arkwright. It's a regular layer
cake. Cyril--he's the second brother; must be thirty-four or five
now--lives on the top floor in a rugless, curtainless, music-mad
existence--just a plain crank. Below him comes William. William collects
things--everything from tenpenny nails to teapots, I should say, and
they're all there in his rooms. Farther down somewhere comes Bertram.
He's _the_ Bertram Henshaw, you understand; the artist.”

“Not the 'Face-of-a-Girl' Henshaw?”

“The same; only of course four years ago he wasn't quite so well known
as he is now. Well, to resume and go on. It was into this house, this
masculine paradise ruled over by Pete and Dong Ling in the kitchen, that
Billy's naïve request for a home came.”

“Great Scott!” breathed Arkwright, appreciatively.

“Yes. Well, the letter was signed 'Billy.' They took her for a boy,
naturally, and after something of a struggle they agreed to let 'him'
come. For his particular delectation they fixed up a room next to
Bertram with guns and fishing rods, and such ladylike specialties; and
William went to the station to meet the boy.”

“With never a suspicion?”

“With never a suspicion.”

“Gorry!”

“Well, 'he' came, and 'she' conquered. I guess things were lively for
a while, though. Oh, there was a kitten, too, I believe, 'Spunk,' who
added to the gayety of nations.”

“But what did the Henshaws do?”

“Well, I wasn't there, of course; but Bertram says they spun around like
tops gone mad for a time, but finally quieted down enough to summon a
married sister for immediate propriety, and to establish Aunt Hannah for
permanency the next day.”

“So that's how it happened! Well, by George!” cried Arkwright.

“Yes,” nodded the other. “So you see there are untold possibilities just
in a name. Remember that. Just suppose _you_, as Mary Jane, should beg a
home in a feminine household--say in Miss Billy's, for instance!”

“I'd like to,” retorted Arkwright, with sudden warmth.

Calderwell stared a little.

The other laughed shamefacedly.

“Oh, it's only that I happen to have a devouring curiosity to meet
that special young lady. I sing her songs (you know she's written some
dandies!), I've heard a lot about her, and I've seen her picture.”
 (He did not add that he had also purloined that same picture from his
mother's bureau--the picture being a gift from Aunt Hannah.) “So you
see I would, indeed, like to occupy a corner in the fair Miss Billy's
household. I could write to Aunt Hannah and beg a home with her, you
know; eh?”

“Of course! Why don't you--'Mary Jane'?” laughed Calderwell. “Billy'd
take you all right. She's had a little Miss Hawthorn, a music teacher,
there for months. She's always doing stunts of that sort. Belle writes
me that she's had a dozen forlornites there all this last summer, two
or three at a time-tired widows, lonesome old maids, and crippled
kids--just to give them a royal good time. So you see she'd take you,
without a doubt. Jove! what a pair you'd make: Miss Billy and Mr. Mary
Jane! You'd drive the suffragettes into conniption fits--just by the
sound of you!”

Arkwright laughed quietly; then he frowned.

“But how about it?” he asked. “I thought she was keeping house with Aunt
Hannah. Didn't she stay at all with the Henshaws?”

“Oh, yes, a few months. I never knew just why she did leave, but I
fancied, from something Billy herself said once, that she discovered she
was creating rather too much of an upheaval in the Strata. So she took
herself off. She went to school, and travelled considerably. She was
over here when I met her first. After that she was with us all one
summer on the yacht. A couple of years ago, or so, she went back to
Boston, bought a house and settled down with Aunt Hannah.”

“And she's not married--or even engaged?”

“Wasn't the last I heard. I haven't seen her since December, and I've
heard from her only indirectly. She corresponds with my sister, and so
do I--intermittently. I heard a month ago from Belle, and _she_ had a
letter from Billy in August. But I heard nothing of any engagement.”

“How about the Henshaws? I should think there might be a chance there
for a romance--a charming girl, and three unattached men.”

Calderwell gave a slow shake of the head.

“I don't think so. William is--let me see--nearly forty-five, I guess,
by this time; and he isn't a marrying man. He buried his heart with his
wife and baby years ago. Cyril, according to Bertram, 'hates women
and all other confusion,' so that ought to let him out. As for Bertram
himself--Bertram is 'only Bertram.' He's always been that. Bertram loves
girls--to paint; but I can't imagine him making serious love to any one.
It would always be the tilt of a chin or the turn of a cheek that he was
admiring--to paint. No, there's no chance for a romance there, I'll
warrant.”

“But there's--yourself.”

Calderwell's eyebrows rose the fraction of an inch.

“Oh, of course. I presume January or February will find me back there,”
 he admitted with a sigh and a shrug. Then, a little bitterly, he added:
“No, Arkwright. I shall keep away if I can. I _know_ there's no chance
for me--now.”

“Then you'll leave me a clear field?” bantered the other.

“Of course--'Mary Jane,'” retorted Calderwell, with equal lightness.

“Thank you.”

“Oh, you needn't,” laughed Calderwell. “My giving you the right of way
doesn't insure you a thoroughfare for yourself--there are others, you
know. Billy Neilson has had sighing swains about I her, I imagine, since
she could walk and talk. She is a wonderfully fascinating little bit of
femininity, and she has a heart of pure gold. All is, I envy the man who
wins it--for the man who wins that, wins her.”

There was no answer. Arkwright sat with his eyes on the moving throng
outside the window near them. Perhaps he had not heard. At all events,
when he spoke some time later, it was of a matter far removed from Miss
Billy Neilson, or the way to her heart. Nor was the young lady mentioned
between them again that day.

Long hours later, just before parting for the night, Arkwright said:

“Calderwell, I'm sorry, but I believe, after all, I can't take that trip
to the lakes with you. I--I'm going home next week.”

“Home! Hang it, Arkwright! I'd counted on you. Isn't this rather
sudden?”

“Yes, and no. I'll own I've been drifting about with you contentedly
enough for the last six months to make you think mountain-climbing and
boat-paddling were the end and aim of my existence. But they aren't, you
know, really.”

“Nonsense! At heart you're as much of a vagabond as I am; and you know
it.”

“Perhaps. But unfortunately I don't happen to carry your pocketbook.”

“You may, if you like. I'll hand it over any time,” grinned Calderwell.

“Thanks. You know well enough what I mean,” shrugged the other.

There was a moment's silence; then Calderwell queried:

“Arkwright, how old are you?”

“Twenty-four.”

“Good! Then you're merely travelling to supplement your education, see?”

“Oh, yes, I see. But something besides my education has got to be
supplemented now, I reckon.”

“What are you going to do?”

There was an almost imperceptible hesitation; then, a little shortly,
came the answer:

“Hit the trail for Grand Opera, and bring up, probably--in vaudeville.”

Calderwell smiled appreciatively.

“You _can_ sing like the devil,” he admitted.

“Thanks,” returned his friend, with uplifted eyebrows. “Do you mind
calling it 'an angel'--just for this occasion?”

“Oh, the matinée-girls will do that fast enough. But, I say,
Arkwright, what are you going to do with those initials then?”

“Let 'em alone.”

“Oh, no, you won't. And you won't be 'Mary Jane,' either. Imagine a Mary
Jane in Grand Opera! I know what you'll be. You'll be 'Señor Martini
Johnini Arkwrightino'! By the way, you didn't say what that 'M. J.'
really did stand for,” hinted Calderwell, shamelessly.

“'Merely Jokes'--in your estimation, evidently,” shrugged the other.
“But my going isn't a joke, Calderwell. I'm really going. And I'm going
to work.”

“But--how shall you manage?”

“Time will tell.”

Calderwell frowned and stirred restlessly in his chair.

“But, honestly, now, to--to follow that trail of yours will take
money. And--er--” a faint red stole to his forehead--“don't they
have--er--patrons for these young and budding geniuses? Why can't I have
a hand in this trail, too--or maybe you'd call it a foot, eh? I'd be no
end glad to, Arkwright.”

“Thanks, old man.” The red was duplicated this time above the brown
silky beard. “That was mighty kind of you, and I appreciate it; but it
won't be necessary. A generous, but perhaps misguided bachelor uncle
left me a few thousands a year or so ago; and I'm going to put them all
down my throat--or rather, _into_ it--before I give up.”

“Where you going to study? New York?”

Again there was an almost imperceptible hesitation before the answer
came.

“I'm not quite prepared to say.”

“Why not try it here?”

Arkwright shook his head.

“I did plan to, when I came over but I've changed my mind. I believe I'd
rather work while longer in America.”

“Hm-m,” murmured Calderwell.

There was a brief silence, followed by other questions and other
answers; after which the friends said good night.

In his own room, as he was dropping off to sleep, Calderwell muttered
drowsily:

“By George! I haven't found out yet what that blamed 'M. J.' stands
for!”




CHAPTER II. AUNT HANNAH GETS A LETTER


In the cozy living-room at Hillside, Billy Neilson's pretty home on
Corey Hill, Billy herself sat writing at the desk. Her pen had just
traced the date, “October twenty-fifth,” when Mrs. Stetson entered with
a letter in her hand.

“Writing, my dear? Then don't let me disturb you.” She turned as if to
go.

Billy dropped her pen, sprang to her feet, flew to the little woman's
side and whirled her half across the room.

“There!” she exclaimed, as she plumped the breathless and scandalized
Aunt Hannah into the biggest easy chair. “I feel better. I just had to
let off steam some way. It's so lovely you came in just when you did!”

“Indeed! I--I'm not so sure of that,” stammered the lady, dropping the
letter into her lap, and patting with agitated fingers her cap, her
curls, the two shawls about her shoulders, and the lace at her throat.
“My grief and conscience, Billy! Wors't you _ever_ grow up?”

“Hope not,” purred Billy cheerfully, dropping herself on to a low
hassock at Aunt Hannah's feet.

“But, my dear, you--you're engaged!”

Billy bubbled into a chuckling laugh.

“As if I didn't know that, when I've just written a dozen notes to
announce it! And, oh, Aunt Hannah, such a time as I've had, telling what
a dear Bertram is, and how I love, love, _love_ him, and what beautiful
eyes he has, and _such_ a nose, and--”

“Billy!” Aunt Hannah was sitting erect in pale horror.

“Eh?” Billy's eyes were roguish.

“You didn't write that in those notes!”

“Write it? Oh, no! That's only what I _wanted_ to write,” chuckled
Billy. “What I really did write was as staid and proper as--here, let me
show you,” she broke off, springing to her feet and running over to her
desk. “There! this is about what I wrote to them all,” she finished,
whipping a note out of one of the unsealed envelopes on the desk and
spreading it open before Aunt Hannah's suspicious eyes.

“Hm-m; that is very good--for you,” admitted the lady.

“Well, I like that!--after all my stern self-control and self-sacrifice
to keep out all those things I _wanted_ to write,” bridled Billy.
“Besides, they'd have been ever so much more interesting reading than
these will be,” she pouted, as she took the note from her companion's
hand.

“I don't doubt it,” observed Aunt Hannah, dryly.

Billy laughed, and tossed the note back on the desk.

“I'm writing to Belle Calderwell, now,” she announced musingly, dropping
herself again on the hassock. “I suppose she'll tell Hugh.”

“Poor boy! He'll be disappointed.”

Billy sighed, but she uptilted her chin a little.

“He ought not to be. I told him long, long ago, the very first time,
that--that I couldn't.”

“I know, dear; but--they don't always understand.” Aunt Hannah sighed
in sympathy with the far-away Hugh Calderwell, as she looked down at the
bright young face near her.

There was a moment's silence; then Billy gave a little laugh.

“He _will_ be surprised,” she said. “He told me once that Bertram
wouldn't ever care for any girl except to paint. To paint, indeed! As
if Bertram didn't love me--just _me!_--if he never saw another tube of
paint!”

“I think he does, my dear.”

Again there was silence; then, from Billy's lips there came softly:

“Just think; we've been engaged almost four weeks--and to-morrow it'll
be announced. I'm so glad I didn't ever announce the other two!”

“The other _two!_” cried Aunt Hannah.

Billy laughed.

“Oh, I forgot. You didn't know about Cyril.”

“Cyril!”

“Oh, there didn't anybody know it, either not even Cyril himself,”
 dimpled Billy, mischievously. “I just engaged myself to him in
imagination, you know, to see how I'd like it. I didn't like it. But
it didn't last, anyhow, very long--just three weeks, I believe. Then I
broke it off,” she finished, with unsmiling mouth, but dancing eyes.

“Billy!” protested Aunt Hannah, feebly.

“But I _am_ glad only the family knew about my engagement to Uncle
William--oh, Aunt Hannah, you don't know how good it does seem to call
him 'Uncle' again. It was always slipping out, anyhow, all the time we
were engaged; and of course it was awful then.”

“That only goes to prove, my dear, how entirely unsuitable it was, from
the start.”

A bright color flooded Billy's face.

“I know; but if a girl _will_ think a man is asking for a wife when all
he wants is a daughter, and if she blandly says 'Yes, thank you, I'll
marry you,' I don't know what you can expect!”

“You can expect just what you got--misery, and almost a tragedy,”
 retorted Aunt Hannah, severely.

A tender light came into Billy's eyes.

“Dear Uncle William! What a jewel he was, all the way through! And he'd
have marched straight to the altar, too, with never a flicker of an
eyelid, I know--self-sacrificing martyr that he was!”

“Martyr!” bristled Aunt Hannah, with extraordinary violence for her.
“I'm thinking that term belonged somewhere else. A month ago, Billy
Neilson, you did not look as if you'd live out half your days. But I
suppose _you'd_ have gone to the altar, too, with never a flicker of an
eyelid!”

“But I thought I had to,” protested Billy. “I couldn't grieve Uncle
William so, after Mrs. Hartwell had said how he--he wanted me.”

Aunt Hannah's lips grew stern at the corners.

“There are times when--when I think it would be wiser if Mrs. Kate
Hartwell would attend to her own affairs!” Aunt Hannah's voice fairly
shook with wrath.

“Why-Aunt Hannah!” reproved Billy in mischievous horror. “I'm shocked at
you!”

Aunt Hannah flushed miserably.

“There, there, child, forget I said it. I ought not to have said it, of
course,” she murmured agitatedly.

Billy laughed.

“You should have heard what Uncle William said! But never mind. We all
found out the mistake before it was too late, and everything is lovely
now, even to Cyril and Marie. Did you ever see anything so beatifically
happy as that couple are? Bertram says he hasn't heard a dirge from
Cyril's rooms for three weeks; and that if anybody else played the kind
of music he's been playing, it would be just common garden ragtime!”

“Music! Oh, my grief and conscience! That makes me think, Billy. If I'm
not actually forgetting what I came in here for,” cried Aunt Hannah,
fumbling in the folds of her dress for the letter that had slipped from
her lap. “I've had word from a young niece. She's going to study music
in Boston.”

“A niece?”

“Well, not really, you know. She calls me 'Aunt,' just as you and the
Henshaw boys do. But I really am related to _her_, for her mother and I
are third cousins, while it was my husband who was distantly related to
the Henshaw family.”

“What's her name?”

“'Mary Jane Arkwright.' Where is that letter?”

“Here it is, on the floor,” reported Billy. “Were you going to read it
to me?” she asked, as she picked it up.

“Yes--if you don't mind.”

“I'd love to hear it.”

“Then I'll read it. It--it rather annoys me in some ways. I thought the
whole family understood that I wasn't living by myself any longer--that
I was living with you. I'm sure I thought I wrote them that, long ago.
But this sounds almost as if they didn't understand it--at least, as if
this girl didn't.”

“How old is she?”

“I don't know; but she must be some old, to be coming here to Boston to
study music, alone--singing, I think she said.”

“You don't remember her, then?”

Aunt Hannah frowned and paused, the letter half withdrawn from its
envelope.

“No--but that isn't strange. They live West. I haven't seen any of them
for years. I know there are several children--and I suppose I've been
told their names. I know there's a boy--the eldest, I think--who is
quite a singer, and there's a girl who paints, I believe; but I don't
seem to remember a 'Mary Jane.'”

“Never mind! Suppose we let Mary Jane speak for herself,” suggested
Billy, dropping her chin into the small pink cup of her hand, and
settling herself to listen.

“Very well,” sighed Aunt Hannah; and she opened the letter and began to
read.


     “DEAR AUNT HANNAH:--This is to tell you
     that I'm coming to Boston to study singing in
     the school for Grand Opera, and I'm planning to
     look you up. Do you object? I said to a friend
     the other day that I'd half a mind to write to Aunt
     Hannah and beg a home with her; and my friend
     retorted: 'Why don't you, Mary Jane?' But
     that, of course, I should not think of doing.

     “But I know I shall be lonesome, Aunt Hannah,
     and I hope you'll let me see you once in a
     while, anyway. I plan now to come next week
     --I've already got as far as New York, as you see
     by the address--and I shall hope to see you
     soon.

     “All the family would send love, I know.
                  “M. J. ARKWRIGHT.”


“Grand Opera! Oh, how perfectly lovely,” cried Billy.

“Yes, but Billy, do you think she is expecting me to invite her to make
her home with me? I shall have to write and explain that I can't--if she
does, of course.”

Billy frowned and hesitated.

“Why, it sounded--a little--that way; but--” Suddenly her face cleared.
“Aunt Hannah, I've thought of the very thing. We _will_ take her!”

“Oh, Billy, I couldn't think of letting you do that,” demurred Aunt
Hannah. “You're very kind--but, oh, no; not that!”

“Why not? I think it would be lovely; and we can just as well as not.
After Marie is married in December, she can have that room. Until then
she can have the little blue room next to me.”

“But--but--we don't know anything about her.”

“We know she's your niece, and she's lonesome; and we know she's
musical. I shall love her for every one of those things. Of course we'll
take her!”

“But--I don't know anything about her age.”

“All the more reason why she should be looked out for, then,” retorted
Billy, promptly. “Why, Aunt Hannah, just as if you didn't want to give
this lonesome, unprotected young girl a home!”

“Oh, I do, of course; but--”

“Then it's all settled,” interposed Billy, springing to her feet.

“But what if we--we shouldn't like her?”

“Nonsense! What if she shouldn't like us?” laughed Billy. “However, if
you'd feel better, just ask her to come and stay with us a month. We
shall keep her all right, afterwards. See if we don't!”

Slowly Aunt Hannah got to her feet.

“Very well, dear. I'll write, of course, as you tell me to; and it's
lovely of you to do it. Now I'll leave you to your letters. I've
hindered you far too long, as it is.”

“You've rested me,” declared Billy, flinging wide her arms.

Aunt Hannah, fearing a second dizzying whirl impelled by those same
young arms, drew her shawls about her shoulders and backed hastily
toward the hall door.

Billy laughed.

“Oh, I won't again--to-day,” she promised merrily. Then, as the lady
reached the arched doorway: “Tell Mary Jane to let us know the day
and train and we'll meet her. Oh, and Aunt Hannah, tell her to wear a
pink--a white pink; and tell her we will, too,” she finished gayly.




CHAPTER III. BILLY AND BERTRAM


Bertram called that evening. Before the open fire in the living-room he
found a pensive Billy awaiting him--a Billy who let herself be kissed,
it is true, and who even kissed back, shyly, adorably; but a Billy who
looked at him with wide, almost frightened eyes.

“Why, darling, what's the matter?” he demanded, his own eyes growing
wide and frightened.

“Bertram, it's--done!”

“What's done? What do you mean?”

“Our engagement. It's--announced. I wrote stacks of notes to-day,
and even now there are some left for to-morrow. And then there's--the
newspapers. Bertram, right away, now, _everybody_ will know it.” Her
voice was tragic.

Bertram relaxed visibly. A tender light came to his eyes.

“Well, didn't you expect everybody would know it, my dear?”

“Y-yes; but--”

At her hesitation, the tender light changed to a quick fear.

“Billy, you aren't--sorry?”

The pink glory that suffused her face answered him before her words did.

“Sorry! Oh, never, Bertram! It's only that it won't be ours any
longer--that is, it won't belong to just our two selves. Everybody will
know it. And they'll bow and smile and say 'How lovely!' to our faces,
and 'Did you ever?' to our backs. Oh, no, I'm not sorry, Bertram; but I
am--afraid.”

“_Afraid_--Billy!”

“Yes.”

Billy sighed, and gazed with pensive eyes into the fire.

Across Bertram's face swept surprise, consternation, and dismay. Bertram
had thought he knew Billy in all her moods and fancies; but he did not
know her in this one.

“Why, Billy!” he breathed.

Billy drew another sigh. It seemed to come from the very bottoms of her
small, satin-slippered feet.

“Well, I am. You're _the_ Bertram Henshaw. You know lots and lots of
people that I never even saw. And they'll come and stand around and
stare and lift their lorgnettes and say: 'Is that the one? Dear me!'”

Bertram gave a relieved laugh.

“Nonsense, sweetheart! I should think you were a picture I'd painted and
hung on a wall.”

“I shall feel as if I were--with all those friends of yours. Bertram,
what if they don't like it?” Her voice had grown tragic again.

“_Like_ it!”

“Yes. The picture--me, I mean.”

“They can't help liking it,” he retorted, with the prompt certainty of
an adoring lover.

Billy shook her head. Her eyes had gone back to the fire.

“Oh, yes, they can. I can hear them. 'What, _she_--Bertram Henshaw's
wife?--a frivolous, inconsequential “Billy” like that?' Bertram!”--Billy
turned fiercely despairing eyes on her lover--“Bertram, sometimes I
wish my name were 'Clarissa Cordelia,' or 'Arabella Maud,' or 'Hannah
Jane'--anything that's feminine and proper!”

Bertram's ringing laugh brought a faint smile to Billy's lips. But the
words that followed the laugh, and the caressing touch of the man's
hands sent a flood of shy color to her face.

“'Hannah Jane,' indeed! As if I'd exchange my Billy for her or any
Clarissa or Arabella that ever grew! I adore Billy--flame, nature,
and--”

“And naughtiness?” put in Billy herself.

“Yes--if there be any,” laughed Bertram, fondly. “But, see,” he added,
taking a tiny box from his pocket, “see what I've brought for this same
Billy to wear. She'd have had it long ago if she hadn't insisted on
waiting for this announcement business.”

“Oh, Bertram, what a beauty!” dimpled Billy, as the flawless diamond in
Bertram's fingers caught the light and sent it back in a flash of flame
and crimson.

“Now you are mine--really mine, sweetheart!” The man's voice and hand
shook as he slipped the ring on Billy's outstretched finger.

Billy caught her breath with almost a sob.

“And I'm so glad to be--yours, dear,” she murmured brokenly. “And--and
I'll make you proud that I am yours, even if I am just 'Billy,'” she
choked. “Oh, I know I'll write such beautiful, beautiful songs now.”

The man drew her into a close embrace.

“As if I cared for that,” he scoffed lovingly.

Billy looked up in quick horror.

“Why, Bertram, you don't mean you don't--care?”

He laughed lightly, and took the dismayed little face between his two
hands.

“Care, darling? of course I care! You know how I love your music. I
care about everything that concerns you. I meant that I'm proud of you
_now_--just you. I love _you_, you know.”

There was a moment's pause. Billy's eyes, as they looked at him, carried
a curious intentness in their dark depths.

“You mean, you like--the turn of my head and the tilt of my chin?” she
asked a little breathlessly.

“I adore them!” came the prompt answer.

To Bertram's utter amazement, Billy drew back with a sharp cry.

“No, no--not that!”

“Why, _Billy!_”

Billy laughed unexpectedly; then she sighed.

“Oh, it's all right, of course,” she assured him hastily. “It's only--”
 Billy stopped and blushed. Billy was thinking of what Hugh Calderwell
had once said to her: that Bertram Henshaw would never love any girl
seriously; that it would always be the turn of her head or the tilt of
her chin that he loved--to paint.

“Well; only what?” demanded Bertram.

Billy blushed the more deeply, but she gave a light laugh.

“Nothing, only something Hugh Calderwell said to me once. You see,
Bertram, I don't think Hugh ever thought you would--marry.”

“Oh, didn't he?” bridled Bertram. “Well, that only goes to show how much
he knows about it. Er--did you announce it--to him?” Bertram's voice was
almost savage now.

Billy smiled.

“No; but I did to his sister, and she'll tell him. Oh, Bertram, such a
time as I had over those notes,” went on Billy, with a chuckle. Her
eyes were dancing, and she was seeming more like her usual self, Bertram
thought. “You see there were such a lot of things I wanted to say, about
what a dear you were, and how much I--I liked you, and that you had such
lovely eyes, and a nose--”

“Billy!” This time it was Bertram who was sitting erect in pale horror.

Billy threw him a roguish glance.

“Goosey! You are as bad as Aunt Hannah! I said that was what I _wanted_
to say. What I really said was--quite another matter,” she finished with
a saucy uptilting of her chin.

Bertram relaxed with a laugh.

“You witch!” His admiring eyes still lingered on her face. “Billy, I'm
going to paint you sometime in just that pose. You're adorable!”

“Pooh! Just another face of a girl,” teased the adorable one.

Bertram gave a sudden exclamation.

“There! And I haven't told you, yet. Guess what my next commission is.”

“To paint a portrait?”

“Yes.”

“Can't. Who is it?”

“J. G. Winthrop's daughter.”

“Not _the_ J. G. Winthrop?”

“The same.”

“Oh, Bertram, how splendid!”

“Isn't it? And then the girl herself! Have you seen her? But you
haven't, I know, unless you met her abroad. She hasn't been in Boston
for years until now.”

“No, I haven't seen her. Is she so _very_ beautiful?” Billy spoke a
little soberly.

“Yes--and no.” The artist lifted his head alertly. What Billy called
his “painting look” came to his face. “It isn't that her features are so
regular--though her mouth and chin are perfect. But her face has so much
character, and there's an elusive something about her eyes--Jove! If
I can only catch it, it'll be the best thing yet that I've ever done,
Billy.”

“Will it? I'm so glad--and you'll get it, I know you will,” claimed
Billy, clearing her throat a little nervously.

“I wish I felt so sure,” sighed Bertram. “But it'll be a great thing if
I do get it--J. G. Winthrop's daughter, you know, besides the merit of
the likeness itself.”

“Yes; yes, indeed!” Billy cleared her throat again. “You've seen her, of
course, lately?”

“Oh, yes. I was there half the morning discussing the details--sittings
and costume, and deciding on the pose.”

“Did you find one--to suit?”

“Find one!” The artist made a despairing gesture. “I found a dozen that
I wanted. The trouble was to tell which I wanted the most.”

Billy gave a nervous little laugh.

“Isn't that--unusual?” she asked.

Bertram lifted his eyebrows with a quizzical smile.

“Well, they aren't all Marguerite Winthrops,” he reminded her.

“Marguerite!” cried Billy. “Oh, is her name Marguerite? I do think
Marguerite is the dearest name!” Billy's eyes and voice were wistful.

“I don't--not the _dearest_. Oh, it's all well enough, of course, but it
can't be compared for a moment to--well, say, 'Billy'!”

Billy smiled, but she shook her head.

“I'm afraid you're not a good judge of names,” she objected.

“Yes, I am; though, for that matter, I should love your name, no matter
what it was.”

“Even if 'twas 'Mary Jane,' eh?” bantered Billy. “Well, you'll have a
chance to find out how you like that name pretty quick, sir. We're going
to have one here.”

“You're going to have a Mary Jane here? Do you mean that Rosa's going
away?”

“Mercy! I hope not,” shuddered Billy. “You don't find a Rosa in every
kitchen--and never in employment agencies! My Mary Jane is a niece of
Aunt Hannah's,--or rather, a cousin. She's coming to Boston to study
music, and I've invited her here. We've asked her for a month, though I
presume we shall keep her right along.”

Bertram frowned.

“Well, of course, that's very nice for--_Mary Jane_,” he sighed with
meaning emphasis.

Billy laughed.

“Don't worry, dear. She won't bother us any.”

“Oh, yes, she will,” sighed Bertram. “She'll be 'round--lots; you see
if she isn't. Billy, I think sometimes you're almost too kind--to other
folks.”

“Never!” laughed Billy. “Besides, what would you have me do when a
lonesome young girl was coming to Boston? Anyhow, _you're_ not the one
to talk, young man. I've known _you_ to take in a lonesome girl and give
her a home,” she flashed merrily.

Bertram chuckled.

“Jove! What a time that was!” he exclaimed, regarding his companion with
fond eyes. “And Spunk, too! Is she going to bring a Spunk?”

“Not that I've heard,” smiled Billy; “but she _is_ going to wear a
pink.”

“Not really, Billy?”

“Of course she is! I told her to. How do you suppose we could know her
when we saw her, if she didn't?” demanded the girl, indignantly. “And
what is more, sir, there will be _two_ pinks worn this time. _I_ sha'n't
do as Uncle William did, and leave off my pink. Only think what long
minutes--that seemed hours of misery--I spent waiting there in that
train-shed, just because I didn't know which man was my Uncle William!”

Bertram laughed and shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, your Mary Jane won't probably turn out to be quite such a
bombshell as our Billy did--unless she should prove to be a boy,” he
added whimsically. “Oh, but Billy, she _can't_ turn out to be such a
dear treasure,” finished the man. And at the adoring look in his eyes
Billy blushed deeply--and promptly forgot all about Mary Jane and her
pink.




CHAPTER IV. FOR MARY JANE


“I have a letter here from Mary Jane, my dear,” announced Aunt Hannah at
the luncheon table one day.

“Have you?” Billy raised interested eyes from her own letters. “What
does she say?”

“She will be here Thursday. Her train is due at the South Station at
four-thirty. She seems to be very grateful to you for your offer to let
her come right here for a month; but she says she's afraid you don't
realize, perhaps, just what you are doing--to take her in like that,
with her singing, and all.”

“Nonsense! She doesn't refuse, does she?”

“Oh, no; she doesn't refuse--but she doesn't accept either, exactly, as
I can see. I've read the letter over twice, too. I'll let you judge for
yourself by and by, when you have time to read it.”

Billy laughed.

“Never mind. I don't want to read it. She's just a little shy about
coming, that's all. She'll stay all right, when we come to meet her.
What time did you say it was, Thursday?”

“Half past four, South Station.”

“Thursday, at half past four. Let me see--that's the day of the
Carletons' 'At Home,' isn't it?”

“Oh, my grief and conscience, yes! But I had forgotten it. What shall we
do?”

“Oh, that will be easy. We'll just go to the Carletons' early and have
John wait, then take us from there to the South Station. Meanwhile we'll
make sure that the little blue room is all ready for her. I put in my
white enamel work-basket yesterday, and that pretty little blue case for
hairpins and curling tongs that I bought at the fair. I want the room to
look homey to her, you know.”

“As if it could look any other way, if _you_ had anything to do with
it,” sighed Aunt Hannah, admiringly.

Billy laughed.

“If we get stranded we might ask the Henshaw boys to help us out, Aunt
Hannah. They'd probably suggest guns and swords. That's the way they
fixed up _my_ room.”

Aunt Hannah raised shocked hands of protest.

“As if we would! Mercy, what a time that was!”

Billy laughed again.

“I never shall forget, _never_, my first glimpse of that room when Mrs.
Hartwell switched on the lights. Oh, Aunt Hannah, I wish you could have
seen it before they took out those guns and spiders!”

“As if I didn't see quite enough when I saw William's face that morning
he came for me!” retorted Aunt Hannah, spiritedly.

“Dear Uncle William! What an old saint he has been all the way through,”
 mused Billy aloud. “And Cyril--who would ever have believed that the
day would come when Cyril would say to me, as he did last night, that he
felt as if Marie had been gone a month. It's been just seven days, you
know.”

“I know. She comes to-morrow, doesn't she?”

“Yes, and I'm glad. I shall tell Marie she needn't leave Cyril on _my_
hands again. Bertram says that at home Cyril hasn't played a dirge since
his engagement; but I notice that up here--where Marie might be, but
isn't--his tunes would never be mistaken for ragtime. By the way,” she
added, as she rose from the table, “that's another surprise in store for
Hugh Calderwell. He always declared that Cyril wasn't a marrying man,
either, any more than Bertram. You know he said Bertram only cared for
girls to paint; but--” She stopped and looked inquiringly at Rosa, who
had appeared at that moment in the hall doorway.

“It's the telephone, Miss Neilson. Mr. Bertram Henshaw wants you.”

A few minutes later Aunt Hannah heard Billy at the piano. For fifteen,
twenty, thirty minutes the brilliant scales and arpeggios rippled
through the rooms and up the stairs to Aunt Hannah, who knew, by the
very sound of them, that some unusual nervousness was being worked off
at the finger tips that played them. At the end of forty-five minutes
Aunt Hannah went down-stairs.

“Billy, my dear, excuse me, but have you forgotten what time it is?
Weren't you going out with Bertram?”

Billy stopped playing at once, but she did not turn her head. Her
fingers busied themselves with some music on the piano.

“We aren't going, Aunt Hannah,” she said.

“Bertram can't.”

“_Can't!_”

“Well, he didn't want to--so of course I said not to. He's been painting
this morning on a new portrait, and she said he might stay to luncheon
and keep right on for a while this afternoon, if he liked. And--he did
like, so he stayed.”

“Why, how--how--” Aunt Hannah stopped helplessly.

“Oh, no, not at all,” interposed Billy, lightly. “He told me all about
it the other night. It's going to be a very wonderful portrait; and,
of course, I wouldn't want to interfere with--his work!” And again a
brilliant scale rippled from Billy's fingers after a crashing chord in
the bass.

Slowly Aunt Hannah turned and went up-stairs. Her eyes were troubled.
Not since Billy's engagement had she heard Billy play like that.

Bertram did not find a pensive Billy awaiting him that evening. He
found a bright-eyed, flushed-cheeked Billy, who let herself be
kissed--once--but who did not kiss back; a blithe, elusive Billy, who
played tripping little melodies, and sang jolly little songs, instead
of sitting before the fire and talking; a Billy who at last turned, and
asked tranquilly:

“Well, how did the picture go?”

Bertram rose then, crossed the room, and took Billy very gently into his
arms.

“Sweetheart, you were a dear this noon to let me off like that,” he
began in a voice shaken with emotion. “You don't know, perhaps, exactly
what you did. You see, I was nearly wild between wanting to be with you,
and wanting to go on with my work. And I was just at that point
where one little word from you, one hint that you wanted me to come
anyway--and I should have come. But you didn't say it, nor hint it. Like
the brave little bit of inspiration that you are, you bade me stay and
go on with my work.”

The “inspiration's” head drooped a little lower, but this only brought
a wealth of soft bronze hair to just where Bertram could lay his cheek
against it--and Bertram promptly took advantage of his opportunity. “And
so I stayed, Billy, and I did good work; I know I did good work. Why,
Billy,”--Bertram stepped back now, and held Billy by the shoulders at
arms' length--“Billy, that's going to be the best work I've ever done. I
can see it coming even now, under my fingers.”

Billy lifted her head and looked into her lover's face. His eyes were
glowing. His cheeks were flushed. His whole countenance was aflame with
the soul of the artist who sees his vision taking shape before him. And
Billy, looking at him, felt suddenly--ashamed.

“Oh, Bertram, I'm proud, proud, _proud_ of you!” she breathed. “Come,
let's go over to the fire-and talk!”




CHAPTER V. MARIE SPEAKS HER MIND


Billy with John and Peggy met Marie Hawthorn at the station. “Peggy”
 was short for “Pegasus,” and was what Billy always called her luxurious,
seven-seated touring car.

“I simply won't call it 'automobile,'” she had declared when she bought
it. “In the first place, it takes too long to say it, and in the second
place, I don't want to add one more to the nineteen different ways to
pronounce it that I hear all around me every day now. As for calling it
my 'car,' or my 'motor car'--I should expect to see a Pullman or one
of those huge black trucks before my door, if I ordered it by either of
those names. Neither will I insult the beautiful thing by calling it a
'machine.' Its name is Pegasus. I shall call it 'Peggy.'”

And “Peggy” she called it. John sniffed his disdain, and Billy's friends
made no secret of their amused tolerance; but, in an astonishingly short
time, half the automobile owners of her acquaintance were calling their
own cars “Peggy”; and even the dignified John himself was heard to order
“some gasoline for Peggy,” quite as a matter of course.

When Marie Hawthorn stepped from the train at the North Station she
greeted Billy with affectionate warmth, though at once her blue eyes
swept the space beyond expectantly and eagerly.

Billy's lips curved in a mischievous smile.

“No, he didn't come,” she said. “He didn't want to--a little bit.”

Marie grew actually pale.

“Didn't _want_ to!” she stammered.

Billy gave her a spasmodic hug.

“Goosey! No, he didn't--a _little_ bit; but he did a great _big_ bit.
As if you didn't know he was dying to come, Marie! But he simply
couldn't--something about his concert Monday night. He told me over the
telephone; but between his joy that you were coming, and his rage that
he couldn't see you the first minute you did come, I couldn't quite make
out what was the trouble. But he's coming to dinner to-night, so he'll
doubtless tell you all about it.”

Marie sighed her relief.

“Oh, that's all right then. I was afraid he was sick--when I didn't see
him.”

Billy laughed softly.

“No, he isn't sick, Marie; but you needn't go away again before the
wedding--not to leave him on my hands. I wouldn't have believed Cyril
Henshaw, confirmed old bachelor and avowed woman-hater, could have acted
the part of a love-sick boy as he has the last week or two.”

The rose-flush on Marie's cheek spread to the roots of her fine yellow
hair.

“Billy, dear, he--he didn't!”

“Marie, dear--he--he did!”

Marie laughed. She did not say anything, but the rose-flush deepened
as she occupied herself very busily in getting her trunk-check from the
little hand bag she carried.

Cyril was not mentioned again until the two girls, veils tied and coats
buttoned, were snugly ensconced in the tonneau, and Peggy's nose was
turned toward home. Then Billy asked:

“Have you settled on where you're going to live?”

“Not quite. We're going to talk of that to-night; but we _do_ know that
we aren't going to live at the Strata.”

“Marie!”

Marie stirred uneasily at the obvious disappointment and reproach in her
friend's voice.

“But, dear, it wouldn't be wise, I'm sure,” she argued hastily. “There
will be you and Bertram--”

“We sha'n't be there for a year, nearly,” cut in Billy, with swift
promptness. “Besides, I think it would be lovely--all together.”

Marie smiled, but she shook her head.

“Lovely--but not practical, dear.”

Billy laughed ruefully.

“I know; you're worrying about those puddings of yours. You're afraid
somebody is going to interfere with your making quite so many as you
want to; and Cyril is worrying for fear there'll be somebody else in the
circle of his shaded lamp besides his little Marie with the light on her
hair, and the mending basket by her side.”

“Billy, what are you talking about?”

Billy threw a roguish glance into her friend's amazed blue eyes.

“Oh, just a little picture Cyril drew once for me of what home meant for
him: a room with a table and a shaded lamp, and a little woman beside it
with the light on her hair and a great basket of sewing by her side.”

Marie's eyes softened.

“Did he say--that?”

“Yes. Oh, he declared he shouldn't want her to sit under that lamp all
the time, of course; but he hoped she'd like that sort of thing.”

Marie threw a quick glance at the stolid back of John beyond the two
empty seats in front of them. Although she knew he could not hear her
words, instinctively she lowered her voice.

“Did you know--then--about--me?” she asked, with heightened color.

“No, only that there was a girl somewhere who, he hoped, would sit under
the lamp some day. And when I asked him if the girl did like that sort
of thing, he said yes, he thought so; for she had told him once that
the things she liked best of all to do were to mend stockings and make
puddings. Then I knew, of course, 'twas you, for I'd heard you say the
same thing. So I sent him right along out to you in the summer-house.”

The pink flush on Marie's face grew to a red one. Her blue eyes turned
again to John's broad back, then drifted to the long, imposing line of
windowed walls and doorways on the right. The automobile was passing
smoothly along Beacon Street now with the Public Garden just behind them
on the left. After a moment Marie turned to Billy again.

“I'm so glad he wants--just puddings and stockings,” she began a little
breathlessly. “You see, for so long I supposed he _wouldn't_ want
anything but a very brilliant, talented wife who could play and sing
beautifully; a wife he'd be proud of--like you.”

“Me? Nonsense!” laughed Billy. “Cyril never wanted me, and I never
wanted him--only once for a few minutes, so to speak, when I thought,
I did. In spite of our music, we aren't a mite congenial. I like people
around; he doesn't. I like to go to plays; he doesn't. He likes rainy
days, and I abhor them. Mercy! Life with me for him would be one long
jangling discord, my love, while with you it'll be one long sweet song!”

Marie drew a deep breath. Her eyes were fixed on a point far ahead up
the curveless street.

“I hope it will, indeed!” she breathed.

Not until they were almost home did Billy say suddenly:

“Oh, did Cyril write you? A young relative of Aunt Hannah's is coming
to-morrow to stay a while at the house.”

“Er--yes, Cyril told me,” admitted Marie.

Billy smiled.

“Didn't like it, I suppose; eh?” she queried shrewdly.

“N-no, I'm afraid he didn't--very well. He said she'd be--one more to be
around.”

“There, what did I tell you?” dimpled Billy. “You can see what you're
coming to when you do get that shaded lamp and the mending basket!”

A moment later, coming in sight of the house, Billy saw a tall,
smooth-shaven man standing on the porch. The man lifted his hat and
waved it gayly, baring a slightly bald head to the sun.

“It's Uncle William--bless his heart!” cried Billy. “They're all coming
to dinner, then he and Aunt Hannah and Bertram and I are going down to
the Hollis Street Theatre and let you and Cyril have a taste of what
that shaded lamp is going to be. I hope you won't be lonesome,” she
finished mischievously, as the car drew up before the door.




CHAPTER VI. AT THE SIGN OF THE PINK


After a week of beautiful autumn weather, Thursday dawned raw and cold.
By noon an east wind had made the temperature still more uncomfortable.

At two o'clock Aunt Hannah tapped at Billy's chamber door. She showed a
troubled face to the girl who answered her knock.

“Billy, _would_ you mind very much if I asked you to go alone to the
Carletons' and to meet Mary Jane?” she inquired anxiously.

“Why, no--that is, of course I should _mind_, dear, because I always
like to have you go to places with me. But it isn't necessary. You
aren't sick; are you?”

“N-no, not exactly; but I have been sneezing all the morning, and taking
camphor and sugar to break it up--if it is a cold. But it is so raw and
Novemberish out, that--”

“Why, of course you sha'n't go, you poor dear! Mercy! don't get one
of those dreadful colds on to you before the wedding! Have you felt
a draft? Where's another shawl?” Billy turned and cast searching eyes
about the room--Billy always kept shawls everywhere for Aunt Hannah's
shoulders and feet. Bertram had been known to say, indeed, that a room,
according to Aunt Hannah, was not fully furnished unless it contained
from one to four shawls, assorted as to size and warmth. Shawls,
certainly, did seem to be a necessity with Aunt Hannah, as she usually
wore from one to three at the same time--which again caused Bertram to
declare that he always counted Aunt Hannah's shawls when he wished to
know what the thermometer was.

“No, I'm not cold, and I haven't felt a draft,” said Aunt Hannah now. “I
put on my thickest gray shawl this morning with the little pink one for
down-stairs, and the blue one for breakfast; so you see I've been very
careful. But I _have_ sneezed six times, so I think 'twould be safer not
to go out in this east wind. You were going to stop for Mrs. Granger,
anyway, weren't you? So you'll have her with you for the tea.”

“Yes, dear, don't worry. I'll take your cards and explain to Mrs.
Carleton and her daughters.”

“And, of course, as far as Mary Jane is concerned, I don't know her any
more than you do; so I couldn't be any help there,” sighed Aunt Hannah.

“Not a bit,” smiled Billy, cheerily. “Don't give it another thought, my
dear. I sha'n't have a bit of trouble. All I'll have to do is to look
for a girl alone with a pink. Of course I'll have mine on, too, and
she'll be watching for me. So just run along and take your nap, dear,
and be all rested and ready to welcome her when she comes,” finished
Billy, stooping to give the soft, faintly pink cheek a warm kiss.

“Well, thank you, my dear; perhaps I will,” sighed Aunt Hannah, drawing
the gray shawl about her as she turned away contentedly.

Mrs. Carleton's tea that afternoon was, for Billy, not an occasion of
unalloyed joy. It was the first time she had appeared at a gathering of
any size since the announcement of her engagement; and, as she dolefully
told Bertram afterwards, she had very much the feeling of the picture
hung on the wall.

“And they _did_ put up their lorgnettes and say, 'Is _that_ the one?'”
 she declared; “and I know some of them finished with 'Did you ever?'
too,” she sighed.

But Billy did not stay long in Mrs. Carleton's softly-lighted,
flower-perfumed rooms. At ten minutes past four she was saying good-by
to a group of friends who were vainly urging her to remain longer.

“I can't--I really can't,” she declared. “I'm due at the South Station
at half past four to meet a Miss Arkwright, a young cousin of Aunt
Hannah's, whom I've never seen before. We're to meet at the sign of
the pink,” she explained smilingly, just touching the single flower she
wore.

Her hostess gave a sudden laugh.

“Let me see, my dear; if I remember rightly, you've had experience
before, meeting at this sign of the pink. At least, I have a very vivid
recollection of Mr. William Henshaw's going once to meet a _boy_ with
a pink, who turned out to be a girl. Now, to even things up, your girl
should turn out to be a boy!”

Billy smiled and reddened.

“Perhaps--but I don't think to-day will strike the balance,” she
retorted, backing toward the door. “This young lady's name is 'Mary
Jane'; and I'll leave it to you to find anything very masculine in
that!”

It was a short drive from Mrs. Carleton's Commonwealth Avenue home to
the South Station, and Peggy made as quick work of it as the narrow,
congested cross streets would allow. In ample time Billy found herself
in the great waiting-room, with John saying respectfully in her ear:

“The man says the train comes in on Track Fourteen, Miss, an' it's on
time.”

At twenty-nine minutes past four Billy left her seat and walked down the
train-shed platform to Track Number Fourteen. She had pinned the pink
now to the outside of her long coat, and it made an attractive dash
of white against the dark-blue velvet. Billy was looking particularly
lovely to-day. Framing her face was the big dark-blue velvet picture hat
with its becoming white plumes.

During the brief minutes' wait before the clanging locomotive puffed
into view far down the long track, Billy's thoughts involuntarily went
back to that other watcher beside a train gate not quite five years
before.

“Dear Uncle William!” she murmured tenderly. Then suddenly she
laughed--so nearly aloud that a man behind her gave her a covert glance
from curious eyes. “My! but what a jolt I must have been to Uncle
William!” Billy was thinking.

The next minute she drew nearer the gate and regarded with absorbed
attention the long line of passengers already sweeping up the narrow
aisle between the cars.

Hurrying men came first, with long strides, and eyes that looked
straight ahead. These Billy let pass with a mere glance. The next group
showed a sprinkling of women--women whose trig hats and linen collars
spelled promptness as well as certainty of aim and accomplishment. To
these, also, Billy paid scant attention. Couples came next--the men
anxious-eyed, and usually walking two steps ahead of their companions;
the women plainly flustered and hurried, and invariably buttoning gloves
or gathering up trailing ends of scarfs or boas.

The crowd was thickening fast, now, and Billy's eyes were alert.
Children were appearing, and young women walking alone. One of these
wore a bunch of violets. Billy gave her a second glance. Then she saw a
pink--but it was on the coat lapel of a tall young fellow with a brown
beard; so with a slight frown she looked beyond down the line.

Old men came now, and old women; fleshy women, and women with small
children and babies. Couples came, too--dawdling couples, plainly newly
married: the men were not two steps ahead, and the women's gloves were
buttoned and their furs in place.

Gradually the line thinned, and soon there were left only an old man
with a cane, and a young woman with three children. Yet nowhere had
Billy seen a girl wearing a white carnation, and walking alone.

With a deeper frown on her face Billy turned and looked about her. She
thought that somewhere in the crowd she had missed Mary Jane, and that
she would find her now, standing near. But there was no one standing
near except the good-looking young fellow with the little pointed
brown beard, who, as Billy noticed a second time, was wearing a white
carnation.

As she glanced toward him, their eyes met. Then, to Billy's unbounded
amazement, the man advanced with uplifted hat.

“I beg your pardon, but is not this--Miss Neilson?”

Billy drew back with just a touch of hauteur.

“Y-yes,” she murmured.

“I thought so--yet I was expecting to see you with Aunt Hannah. I am M.
J. Arkwright, Miss Neilson.”

For a brief instant Billy stared dazedly.

“You don't mean--Mary Jane?” she gasped.

“I'm afraid I do.” His lips twitched.

“But I thought--we were expecting--” She stopped helplessly. For one
more brief instant she stared; then, suddenly, a swift change came to
her face. Her eyes danced.

“Oh--oh!” she chuckled. “How perfectly funny! You _have_ evened things
up, after all. To think that Mary Jane should be a--” She paused and
flashed almost angrily suspicious eyes into his face. “But mine _was_
'Billy,'” she cried. “Your name isn't really--Mary Jane'?”

“I am often called that.” His brown eyes twinkled, but they did not
swerve from their direct gaze into her own.

“But--” Billy hesitated, and turned her eyes away. She saw then that
many curious glances were already being flung in her direction. The
color in her cheeks deepened. With an odd little gesture she seemed to
toss something aside. “Never mind,” she laughed a little hysterically.
“If you'll pick up your bag, please, Mr. Mary Jane, and come with me.
John and Peggy are waiting. Or--I forgot--you have a trunk, of course?”

The man raised a protesting hand.

“Thank you; but, Miss Neilson, really--I couldn't think of trespassing
on your hospitality--now, you know.”

“But we--we invited you,” stammered Billy.

He shook his head.

“You invited _Miss_ Mary Jane.”

Billy bubbled into low laughter.

“I beg your pardon, but it _is_ funny,” she sighed. “You see _I_ came
once just the same way, and now to have the tables turned like this!
What will Aunt Hannah say--what will everybody say? Come, I want them to
begin--to say it,” she chuckled irrepressibly.

“Thank you, but I shall go to a hotel, of course. Later, if you'll be so
good as to let me call, and explain--!”

“But I'm afraid Aunt Hannah will think--” Billy stopped abruptly. Some
distance away she saw John coming toward them. She turned hurriedly to
the man at her side. Her eyes still danced, but her voice was mockingly
serious. “Really, Mr. Mary Jane, I'm afraid you'll have to come to
dinner; then you can settle the rest with Aunt Hannah. John is almost
upon us--and _I_ don't want to make explanations. Do you?”

“John,” she said airily to the somewhat dazed chauffeur (who had been
told he was to meet a young woman), “take Mr. Arkwright's bag, please,
and show him where Peggy is waiting. It will be five minutes, perhaps,
before I can come--if you'll kindly excuse me,” she added to Arkwright,
with a flashing glance from merry eyes. “I have some--telephoning to
do.”

All the way to the telephone booth Billy was trying to bring order out
of the chaos of her mind; but all the way, too, she was chuckling.

“To think that this thing should have happened to _me!_” she
said, almost aloud. “And here I am telephoning just like Uncle
William--Bertram said Uncle William _did_ telephone about _me!_”

In due course Billy had Aunt Hannah at the other end of the wire.

“Aunt Hannah, listen. I'd never have believed it, but it's happened.
Mary Jane is--a man.”

Billy heard a dismayed gasp and a muttered “Oh, my grief and
conscience!” then a shaking “Wha-at?”

“I say, Mary Jane is a man.” Billy was enjoying herself hugely.

“A _ma-an!_”

“Yes; a great big man with a brown beard. He's waiting now with John and
I must go.”

“But, Billy, I don't understand,” chattered an agitated voice over the
line. “He--he called himself 'Mary Jane.' He hasn't any business to be
a big man with a brown beard! What shall we do? We don't want a big man
with a brown beard--here!”

Billy laughed roguishly.

“I don't know. _You_ asked him! How he will like that little blue
room--Aunt Hannah!” Billy's voice turned suddenly tragic. “For pity's
sake take out those curling tongs and hairpins, and the work-basket.
I'd _never_ hear the last of it if he saw those, I know. He's just that
kind!”

A half stifled groan came over the wire.

“Billy, he can't stay here.”

Billy laughed again.

“No, no, dear; he won't, I know. He says he's going to a hotel. But
I had to bring him home to dinner; there was no other way, under the
circumstances. He won't stay. Don't you worry. But good-by. I must
go. _Remember those curling tongs!_” And the receiver clicked sharply
against the hook.

In the automobile some minutes later, Billy and Mr. M. J. Arkwright
were speeding toward Corey Hill. It was during a slight pause in the
conversation that Billy turned to her companion with a demure:

“I telephoned Aunt Hannah, Mr. Arkwright. I thought she ought to
be--warned.”

“You are very kind. What did she say?--if I may ask.”

There was a brief moment of hesitation before Billy answered.

“She said you called yourself 'Mary Jane,' and that you hadn't any
business to be a big man with a brown beard.”

Arkwright laughed.

“I'm afraid I owe Aunt Hannah an apology,” he said. He hesitated,
glanced admiringly at the glowing, half-averted face near him, then went
on decisively. He wore the air of a man who has set the match to his
bridges. “I signed both letters 'M. J. Arkwright,' but in the first one
I quoted a remark of a friend, and in that remark I was addressed as
'Mary Jane.' I did not know but Aunt Hannah knew of the nickname.”
 (Arkwright was speaking a little slowly now, as if weighing his words.)
“But when she answered, I saw that she did not; for, from something she
said, I realized that she thought I was a real Mary Jane. For the joke
of the thing I let it pass. But--if she noticed my letter carefully, she
saw that I did not accept your kind invitation to give 'Mary Jane' a
home.”

“Yes, we noticed that,” nodded Billy, merrily. “But we didn't think you
meant it. You see we pictured you as a shy young thing. But, really,”
 she went on with a low laugh, “you see your coming as a masculine 'Mary
Jane' was particularly funny--for me; for, though perhaps you didn't
know it, I came once to this very same city, wearing a pink, and was
expected to be Billy, a boy. And only to-day a lady warned me that
your coming might even things up. But I didn't believe it would--a Mary
Jane!”

Arkwright laughed. Again he hesitated, and seemed to be weighing his
words.

“Yes, I heard about that coming of yours. I might almost say--that's why
I--let the mistake pass in Aunt Hannah's letter,” he said.

Billy turned with reproachful eyes.

“Oh, how could--you? But then--it was a temptation!” She laughed
suddenly. “What sinful joy you must have had watching me hunt for 'Mary
Jane.'”

“I didn't,” acknowledged the other, with unexpected candor. “I
felt--ashamed. And when I saw you were there alone without Aunt Hannah,
I came very near not speaking at all--until I realized that that would
be even worse, under the circumstances.”

“Of course it would,” smiled Billy, brightly; “so I don't see but I
shall have to forgive you, after all. And here we are at home, Mr. Mary
Jane. By the way, what did you say that 'M. J.' did stand for?” she
asked, as the car came to a stop.

The man did not seem to hear; at least he did not answer. He was
helping his hostess to alight. A moment later a plainly agitated Aunt
Hannah--her gray shawl topped with a huge black one--opened the door of
the house.




CHAPTER VII. OLD FRIENDS AND NEW


At ten minutes before six on the afternoon of Arkwright's arrival, Billy
came into the living-room to welcome the three Henshaw brothers, who, as
was frequently the case, were dining at Hillside.

Bertram thought Billy had never looked prettier than she did this
afternoon with the bronze sheen of her pretty house gown bringing
out the bronze lights in her dark eyes and in the soft waves of her
beautiful hair. Her countenance, too, carried a peculiar something that
the artist's eye was quick to detect, and that the artist's fingers
tingled to put on canvas.

“Jove! Billy,” he said low in her ear, as he greeted her, “I wish I had
a brush in my hand this minute. I'd have a 'Face of a Girl' that would
be worth while!”

Billy laughed and dimpled her appreciation; but down in her heart she
was conscious of a vague unrest. Billy wished, sometimes, that she did
not so often seem to Bertram--a picture.

She turned to Cyril with outstretched hand.

“Oh, yes, Marie's coming,” she smiled in answer to the quick shifting
of Cyril's eyes to the hall doorway. “And Aunt Hannah, too. They're
up-stairs.”

“And Mary Jane?” demanded William, a little anxiously

“Will's getting nervous,” volunteered Bertram, airily. “He wants to see
Mary Jane. You see we've told him that we shall expect him to see that
she doesn't bother us four too much, you know. He's expected always to
remove her quietly but effectually, whenever he sees that she is likely
to interrupt a tête-á-tête. Naturally, then, Will wants to see
Mary Jane.”

Billy began to laugh hysterically. She dropped into a chair and raised
both her hands, palms outward.

“Don't, don't--please don't!” she choked, “or I shall die. I've had all
I can stand, already.”

“All you can stand?”

“What do you mean?”

“Is she so--impossible?” This last was from Bertram, spoken softly, and
with a hurried glance toward the hall.

Billy dropped her hands and lifted her head. By heroic effort she pulled
her face into sobriety--all but her eyes--and announced:

“Mary Jane is--a man.”

“Wha-at?”

“A _man!_”

“Billy!”

Three masculine forms sat suddenly erect.

“Yes. Oh, Uncle William, I know now just how you felt--I know, I know,”
 gurgled Billy, incoherently. “There he stood with his pink just as I
did--only he had a brown beard, and he didn't have Spunk--and I had to
telephone to prepare folks, just as you did. And the room--the room!
I fixed the room, too,” she babbled breathlessly, “only I had curling
tongs and hair pins in it instead of guns and spiders!”

“Child, child! what _are_ you talking about?” William's face was red.

“A _man!_--_Mary Jane!_” Cyril was merely cross.

“Billy, what does this mean?” Bertram had grown a little white.

Billy began to laugh again, yet she was plainly trying to control
herself.

“I'll tell you. I must tell you. Aunt Hannah is keeping him up-stairs
so I can tell you,” she panted. “But it was so funny, when I expected a
girl, you know, to see him with his brown beard, and he was so tall and
big! And, of course, it made me think how _I_ came, and was a girl when
you expected a boy; and Mrs. Carleton had just said to-day that maybe
this girl would even things up. Oh, it was so funny!”

“Billy, my-my dear,” remonstrated Uncle William, mildly.

“But what _is_ his name?” demanded Cyril.

“Did the creature sign himself 'Mary Jane'?” exploded Bertram.

“I don't know his name, except that it's 'M. J.'--and that's how he
signed the letters. But he _is_ called 'Mary Jane' sometimes, and in the
letter he quoted somebody's speech--I've forgotten just how--but in it
he was called 'Mary Jane,' and, of course, Aunt Hannah took him for a
girl,” explained Billy, grown a little more coherent now.

“Didn't he write again?” asked William.

“Yes.”

“Well, why didn't he correct the mistake, then?” demanded Bertram.

Billy chuckled.

“He didn't want to, I guess. He thought it was too good a joke.”

“Joke!” scoffed Cyril.

“But, see here, Billy, he isn't going to live here--now?” Bertram's
voice was almost savage.

“Oh, no, he isn't going to live here--now,” interposed smooth tones from
the doorway.

“Mr.--Arkwright!” breathed Billy, confusedly.

Three crimson-faced men sprang to their feet. The situation, for a
moment, threatened embarrassed misery for all concerned; but Arkwright,
with a cheery smile, advanced straight toward Bertram, and held out a
friendly hand.

“The proverbial fate of listeners,” he said easily; “but I don't blame
you at all. No, 'he' isn't going to live here,” he went on, grasping
each brother's hand in turn, as Billy murmured faint introductions; “and
what is more, he hereby asks everybody's pardon for the annoyance his
little joke has caused. He might add that he's heartily-ashamed of
himself, as well; but if any of you--” Arkwright turned to the three
tall men still standing by their chairs--“if any of you had suffered
what he has at the hands of a swarm of youngsters for that name's sake,
you wouldn't blame him for being tempted to get what fun he could out of
Mary Jane--if there ever came a chance!”

Naturally, after this, there could be nothing stiff or embarrassing.
Billy laughed in relief, and motioned Mr. Arkwright to a seat near her.
William said “Of course, of course!” and shook hands again. Bertram and
Cyril laughed shamefacedly and sat down. Somebody said: “But what does
the 'M. J.' stand for, anyhow?” Nobody answered this, however; perhaps
because Aunt Hannah and Marie appeared just then in the doorway.

Dinner proved to be a lively meal. In the newcomer, Bertram met his
match for wit and satire; and “Mr. Mary Jane,” as he was promptly called
by every one but Aunt Hannah, was found to be a most entertaining guest.

After dinner somebody suggested music.

Cyril frowned, and got up abruptly. Still frowning, he turned to a
bookcase near him and began to take down and examine some of the books.

Bertram twinkled and glanced at Billy.

“Which is it, Cyril?” he called with cheerful impertinence; “stool,
piano, or audience that is the matter to-night?”

Only a shrug from Cyril answered.

“You see,” explained Bertram, jauntily, to Arkwright, whose eyes were
slightly puzzled, “Cyril never plays unless the piano and the pedals and
the weather and your ears and my watch and his fingers are just right!”

“Nonsense!” scorned Cyril, dropping his book and walking back to his
chair. “I don't feel like playing to-night; that's all.”

“You see,” nodded Bertram again.

“I see,” bowed Arkwright with quiet amusement.

“I believe--Mr. Mary Jane--sings,” observed Billy, at this point,
demurely.

“Why, yes, of course,” chimed in Aunt Hannah with some nervousness.
“That's what she--I mean he--was coming to Boston for--to study music.”

Everybody laughed.

“Won't you sing, please?” asked Billy. “Can you--without your notes? I
have lots of songs if you want them.”

For a moment--but only a moment--Arkwright hesitated; then he rose and
went to the piano.

With the easy sureness of the trained musician his fingers dropped to
the keys and slid into preliminary chords and arpeggios to test the
touch of the piano; then, with a sweetness and purity that made every
listener turn in amazed delight, a well-trained tenor began the “Thro'
the leaves the night winds moving,” of Schubert's Serenade.

Cyril's chin had lifted at the first tone. He was listening now with
very obvious pleasure. Bertram, too, was showing by his attitude the
keenest appreciation. William and Aunt Hannah, resting back in their
chairs, were contentedly nodding their approval to each other. Marie in
her corner was motionless with rapture. As to Billy--Billy was plainly
oblivious of everything but the song and the singer. She seemed scarcely
to move or to breathe till the song's completion; then there came a low
“Oh, how beautiful!” through her parted lips.

Bertram, looking at her, was conscious of a vague irritation.

“Arkwright, you're a lucky dog,” he declared almost crossly. “I wish I
could sing like that!”

“I wish I could paint a 'Face of a Girl,'” smiled the tenor as he turned
from the piano.

“Oh, but, Mr. Arkwright, don't stop,” objected Billy, springing to her
feet and going to her music cabinet by the piano. “There's a little song
of Nevin's I want you to sing. There, here it is. Just let me play it
for you.” And she slipped into the place the singer had just left.

It was the beginning of the end. After Nevin came De Koven, and after
De Koven, Gounod. Then came Nevin again, Billy still playing the
accompaniment. Next followed a duet. Billy did not consider herself much
of a singer, but her voice was sweet and true, and not without training.
It blended very prettily with the clear, pure tenor.

William and Aunt Hannah still smiled contentedly in their chairs, though
Aunt Hannah had reached for the pink shawl near her--the music had sent
little shivers down her spine. Cyril, with Marie, had slipped into the
little reception-room across the hall, ostensibly to look at some plans
for a house, although--as everybody knew--they were not intending to
build for a year.

Bertram, still sitting stiffly erect in his chair, was not conscious
of a vague irritation now. He was conscious of a very real, and a very
decided one--an irritation that was directed against himself, against
Billy, and against this man, Arkwright; but chiefly against music,
_per se_. He hated music. He wished he could sing. He wondered how long
it took to teach a man to sing, anyhow; and he wondered if a man could
sing--who never had sung.

At this point the duet came to an end, and Billy and her guest left
the piano. Almost at once, after this, Arkwright made his very graceful
adieus, and went off with his suit-case to the hotel where, as he had
informed Aunt Hannah, his room was already engaged.

William went home then, and Aunt Hannah went up-stairs. Cyril and Marie
withdrew into a still more secluded corner to look at their plans, and
Bertram found himself at last alone with Billy. He forgot, then, in
the blissful hour he spent with her before the open fire, how he hated
music; though he did say, just before he went home that night:

“Billy, how long does it take--to learn to sing?”

“Why, I don't know, I'm sure,” replied Billy, abstractedly; then, with
sudden fervor: “Oh, Bertram, hasn't Mr. Mary Jane a beautiful voice?”

Bertram wished then he had not asked the question; but all he said was:

“'Mr. Mary Jane,' indeed! What an absurd name!”

“But doesn't he sing beautifully?”

“Eh? Oh, yes, he sings all right,” said Bertram's tongue. Bertram's
manner said: “Oh, yes, anybody can sing.”




CHAPTER VIII. M. J. OPENS THE GAME


On the morning after Cyril's first concert of the season, Billy sat
sewing with Aunt Hannah in the little sitting-room at the end of the
hall upstairs. Aunt Hannah wore only one shawl this morning,--which
meant that she was feeling unusually well.

“Marie ought to be here to mend these stockings,” remarked Billy, as she
critically examined a tiny break in the black silk mesh stretched across
the darning-egg in her hand; “only she'd want a bigger hole. She does so
love to make a beautiful black latticework bridge across a yawning white
china sea--and you'd think the safety of an army depended on the way
each plank was laid, too,” she concluded.

Aunt Hannah smiled tranquilly, but she did not speak.

“I suppose you don't happen to know if Cyril does wear big holes in his
socks,” resumed Billy, after a moment's silence. “If you'll believe it,
that thought popped into my head last night when Cyril was playing
that concerto so superbly. It did, actually--right in the middle of the
adagio movement, too. And in spite of my joy and pride in the music I
had all I could do to keep from nudging Marie right there and then and
asking her whether or not the dear man was hard on his hose.”

“Billy!” gasped the shocked Aunt Hannah; but the gasp broke at once into
what--in Aunt Hannah--passed for a chuckle. “If I remember rightly, when
I was there at the house with you at first, my dear, William told me
that Cyril wouldn't wear any sock after it came to mending.”

“Horrors!” Billy waved her stocking in mock despair. “That will never
do in the world. It would break Marie's heart. You know how she dotes on
darning.”

“Yes, I know,” smiled Aunt Hannah. “By the way, where is she this
morning?”

Billy raised her eyebrows quizzically.

“Gone to look at an apartment in Cambridge, I believe. Really,
Aunt Hannah, between her home-hunting in the morning, and her
furniture-and-rug hunting in the afternoon, and her poring over
house-plans in the evening, I can't get her to attend to her clothes at
all. Never did I see a bride so utterly indifferent to her trousseau as
Marie Hawthorn--and her wedding less than a month away!”

“But she's been shopping with you once or twice, since she came back,
hasn't she? And she said it was for her trousseau.”

Billy laughed.

“Her trousseau! Oh, yes, it was. I'll tell you what she got for her
trousseau that first day. We started out to buy two hats, some lace for
her wedding gown, some crêpe de Chine and net for a little dinner
frock, and some silk for a couple of waists to go with her tailored
suit; and what did we get? We purchased a new-style egg-beater and a
set of cake tins. Marie got into the kitchen department and I simply
couldn't get her out of it. But the next day I was not to be inveigled
below stairs by any plaintive prayer for a nutmeg-grater or a soda
spoon. She _shopped_ that day, and to some purpose. We accomplished
lots.”

Aunt Hannah looked a little concerned.

“But she must have _some_ things started!”

“Oh, she has--'most everything now. _I've_ seen to that. Of course her
outfit is very simple, anyway. Marie hasn't much money, you know, and
she simply won't let me do half what I want to. Still, she had saved
up some money, and I've finally convinced her that a trousseau doesn't
consist of egg-beaters and cake tins, and that Cyril would want her to
look pretty. That name will fetch her every time, and I've learned to
use it beautifully. I think if I told her Cyril approved of short hair
and near-sightedness she'd I cut off her golden locks and don spectacles
on the spot.”

Aunt Hannah laughed softly.

“What a child you are, Billy! Besides, just as if Marie were the only
one in the house who is ruled by a magic name!”

The color deepened in Billy's cheeks.

“Well, of course, any girl--cares something--for the man she loves. Just
as if I wouldn't do anything in the world I could for Bertram!”

“Oh, that makes me think; who was that young woman Bertram was talking
with last evening--just after he left us, I mean?”

“Miss Winthrop--Miss Marguerite Winthrop. Bertram is--is painting her
portrait, you know.”

“Oh, is that the one?” murmured Aunt Hannah. “Hm-m; well, she has a
beautiful face.”

“Yes, she has.” Billy spoke very cheerfully. She even hummed a little
tune as she carefully selected a needle from the cushion in her basket.

“There's a peculiar something in her face,” mused Aunt Hannah, aloud.

The little tune stopped abruptly, ending in a nervous laugh.

“Dear me! I wonder how it feels to have a peculiar something in your
face. Bertram, too, says she has it. He's trying to 'catch it,' he says.
I wonder now--if he does catch it, does she lose it?” Flippant as were
the words, the voice that uttered them shook a little.

Aunt Hannah smiled indulgently--Aunt Hannah had heard only the
flippancy, not the shake.

“I don't know, my dear. You might ask him this afternoon.”

Billy made a sudden movement. The china egg in her lap rolled to the
floor.

“Oh, but I don't see him this afternoon,” she said lightly, as she
stooped to pick up the egg.

“Why, I'm sure he told me--” Aunt Hannah's sentence ended in a
questioning pause.

“Yes, I know,” nodded Billy, brightly; “but he's told me something
since. He isn't going. He telephoned me this morning. Miss Winthrop
wanted the sitting changed from to-morrow to this afternoon. He said he
knew I'd understand.”

“Why, yes; but--” Aunt Hannah did not finish her sentence. The whir of
an electric bell had sounded through the house. A few moments later Rosa
appeared in the open doorway.

“It's Mr. Arkwright, Miss. He said as how he had brought the music,”
 she announced.

“Tell him I'll be down at once,” directed the mistress of Hillside.

As the maid disappeared, Billy put aside her work and sprang lightly to
her feet.

“Now wasn't that nice of him? We were talking last night about some
duets he had, and he said he'd bring them over. I didn't know he'd come
so soon, though.”

Billy had almost reached the bottom of the stairway, when a low,
familiar strain of music drifted out from the living-room. Billy caught
her breath, and held her foot suspended. The next moment the familiar
strain of music had become a lullaby--one of Billy's own--and sung now
by a melting tenor voice that lingered caressingly and understandingly
on every tender cadence.

Motionless and almost breathless, Billy waited until the last
low “lul-la-by” vibrated into silence; then with shining eyes and
outstretched hands she entered the living-room.

“Oh, that was--beautiful,” she breathed.

Arkwright was on his feet instantly. His eyes, too, were alight.

“I could not resist singing it just once--here,” he said a little
unsteadily, as their hands met.

“But to hear my little song sung like that! I couldn't believe it was
mine,” choked Billy, still plainly very much moved. “You sang it as I've
never heard it sung before.”

Arkwright shook his head slowly.

“The inspiration of the room--that is all,”, he said. “It is a beautiful
song. All of your songs are beautiful.”

Billy blushed rosily.

“Thank you. You know--more of them, then?”

“I think I know them all--unless you have some new ones out. Have you
some new ones, lately?”

Billy shook her head.

“No; I haven't written anything since last spring.”

“But you're going to?”

She drew a long sigh.

“Yes, oh, yes. I know that _now_--” With a swift biting of her lower
lip Billy caught herself up in time. As if she could tell this man, this
stranger, what she had told Bertram that night by the fire--that she
knew that now, _now_ she would write beautiful songs, with his love, and
his pride in her, as incentives. “Oh, yes, I think I shall write more
one of these days,” she finished lightly. “But come, this isn't singing
duets! I want to see the music you brought.”

They sang then, one after another of the duets. To Billy, the music was
new and interesting. To Billy, too, it was new (and interesting) to hear
her own voice blending with another's so perfectly--to feel herself a
part of such exquisite harmony.

“Oh, oh!” she breathed ecstatically, after the last note of a
particularly beautiful phrase. “I never knew before how lovely it was to
sing duets.”

“Nor I,” replied Arkwright in a voice that was not quite steady.

Arkwright's eyes were on the enraptured face of the girl so near him.
It was well, perhaps, that Billy did not happen to turn and catch their
expression. Still, it might have been better if she had turned, after
all. But Billy's eyes were on the music before her. Her fingers were
busy with the fluttering pages, searching for another duet.

“Didn't you?” she murmured abstractedly. “I supposed _you'd_ sung them
before; but you see I never did--until the other night. There, let's try
this one!”

“This one” was followed by another and another. Then Billy drew a long
breath.

“There! that must positively be the last,” she declared reluctantly.
“I'm so hoarse now I can scarcely croak. You see, I don't pretend to
sing, really.”

“Don't you? You sing far better than some who do, anyhow,” retorted the
man, warmly.

“Thank you,” smiled Billy; “that was nice of you to say so--for my
sake--and the others aren't here to care. But tell me of yourself. I
haven't had a chance to ask you yet; and--I think you said Mary Jane was
going to study for Grand Opera.”

Arkwright laughed and shrugged his shoulders.

“She is; but, as I told Calderwell, she's quite likely to bring up in
vaudeville.”

“Calderwell! Do you mean--Hugh Calderwell?” Billy's cheeks showed a
deeper color.

The man gave an embarrassed little laugh. He had not meant to let that
name slip out just yet.

“Yes.” He hesitated, then plunged on recklessly. “We tramped half over
Europe together last summer.”

“Did you?” Billy left her seat at the piano for one nearer the fire.
“But this isn't telling me about your own plans,” she hurried on a
little precipitately. “You've studied before, of course. Your voice
shows that.”

“Oh, yes; I've studied singing several years, and I've had a year or two
of church work, besides a little concert practice of a mild sort.”

“Have you begun here, yet?”

“Y-yes, I've had my voice tried.”

Billy sat erect with eager interest.

“They liked it, of course?”

Arkwright laughed.

“I'm not saying that.”

“No, but I am,” declared Billy, with conviction. “They couldn't help
liking it.”

Arkwright laughed again. Just how well they had “liked it” he did not
intend to say. Their remarks had been quite too flattering to repeat
even to this very plainly interested young woman--delightful and
heart-warming as was this same show of interest, to himself.

“Thank you,” was all he said.

Billy gave an excited little bounce in her chair.

“And you'll begin to learn rôles right away?”

“I already have, some--after a fashion--before I came here.”

“Really? How splendid! Why, then you'll be acting them next right on the
Boston Opera House stage, and we'll all go to hear you. How perfectly
lovely! I can hardly wait.”

Arkwright laughed--but his eyes glowed with pleasure.

“Aren't you hurrying things a little?” he ventured.

“But they do let the students appear,” argued Billy. “I knew a girl last
year who went on in 'Aida,' and she was a pupil at the School. She sang
first in a Sunday concert, then they put her in the bill for a Saturday
night. She did splendidly--so well that they gave her a chance later at
a subscription performance. Oh, you'll be there--and soon, too!”

“Thank you! I only wish the powers that could put me there had your
flattering enthusiasm on the matter,” he smiled.

“I don't worry any,” nodded Billy, “only please don't 'arrive' too
soon--not before the wedding, you know,” she added jokingly. “We shall
be too busy to give you proper attention until after that.”

A peculiar look crossed Arkwright's face.

“The--_wedding?_” he asked, a little faintly.

“Yes. Didn't you know? My friend, Miss Hawthorn, is to marry Mr. Cyril
Henshaw next month.”

The man opposite relaxed visibly.

“Oh, _Miss Hawthorn!_ No, I didn't know,” he murmured; then, with sudden
astonishment he added: “And to Mr. Cyril, the musician, did you say?”

“Yes. You seem surprised.”

“I am.” Arkwright paused, then went on almost defiantly. “You see,
Calderwell was telling me only last September how very unmarriageable
all the Henshaw brothers were. So I am surprised--naturally,” finished
Arkwright, as he rose to take his leave.

A swift crimson stained Billy's face.

“But surely you must know that--that--”

“That he has a right to change his mind, of course,” supplemented
Arkwright smilingly, coming to her rescue in the evident confusion
that would not let her finish her sentence. “But Calderwell made it so
emphatic, you see, about all the brothers. He said that William had lost
his heart long ago; that Cyril hadn't any to lose; and that Bertram--”

“But, Mr. Arkwright, Bertram is--is--” Billy had moistened her lips, and
plunged hurriedly in to prevent Arkwright's next words. But again was
she unable to finish her sentence, and again was she forced to listen
to a very different completion from the smiling lips of the man at her
side.

“Is an artist, of course,” said Arkwright. “That's what Calderwell
declared--that it would always be the tilt of a chin or the curve of a
cheek that the artist loved--to paint.”

Billy drew back suddenly. Her face paled. As if _now_ she could tell
this man that Bertram Henshaw was engaged to her! He would find it out
soon, of course, for himself; and perhaps he, like Hugh Calderwell,
would think it was the curve of _her_ cheek, or the tilt of _her_ chin--

Billy lifted her chin very defiantly now as she held out her hand in
good-by.




CHAPTER IX. A RUG, A PICTURE, AND A GIRL AFRAID


Thanksgiving came. Once again the Henshaw brothers invited Billy and
Aunt Hannah to spend the day with them. This time, however, there was to
be an additional guest present in the person of Marie Hawthorn.

And what a day it was, for everything and everybody concerned! First
the Strata itself: from Dong Ling's kitchen in the basement to Cyril's
domain on the top floor, the house was as spick-and-span as Pete's eager
old hands could make it. In the drawing-room and in Bertram's den and
studio, great clusters of pink roses perfumed the air, and brightened
the sombre richness of the old-time furnishings. Before the open fire in
the den a sleek gray cat--adorned with a huge ribbon bow the exact shade
of the roses (Bertram had seen to that!)--winked and blinked sleepy
yellow eyes. In Bertram's studio the latest “Face of a Girl” had made
way for a group of canvases and plaques, every one of which showed Billy
Neilson in one pose or another. Up-stairs, where William's chaos of
treasures filled shelves and cabinets, the place of honor was given to
a small black velvet square on which rested a pair of quaint Battersea
enamel mirror knobs. In Cyril's rooms--usually so austerely bare--a
handsome Oriental rug and several curtain-draped chairs hinted at
purchases made at the instigation of a taste other than his own.

When the doorbell rang Pete admitted the ladies with a promptness that
was suggestive of surreptitious watching at some window. On Pete's
face the dignity of his high office and the delight of the moment were
fighting for mastery. The dignity held firmly through Mrs. Stetson's
friendly greeting; but it fled in defeat when Billy Neilson stepped over
the threshold with a cheery “Good morning, Pete.”

“Laws! But it's good to be seein' you here again,” stammered the
man,--delight now in sole possession.

“She'll be coming to stay, one of these days, Pete,” smiled the eldest
Henshaw, hurrying forward.

“I wish she had now,” whispered Bertram, who, in spite of William's
quick stride, had reached Billy's side first.

From the stairway came the patter of a man's slippered feet.

“The rug has come, and the curtains, too,” called a “householder” sort
of voice that few would have recognized as belonging to Cyril Henshaw.
“You must all come up-stairs and see them after dinner.” The voice,
apparently, spoke to everybody; but the eyes of the owner of the voice
plainly saw only the fair-haired young woman who stood a little in the
shadow behind Billy, and who was looking about her now as at something a
little fearsome, but very dear.

“You know--I've never been--where you live--before,” explained Marie
Hawthorn in a low, vibrant tone, when Cyril bent over her to take the
furs from her shoulders.

In Bertram's den a little later, as hosts and guests advanced toward
the fire, the sleek gray cat rose, stretched lazily, and turned her head
with majestic condescension.

“Well, Spunkie, come here,” commanded Billy, snapping her fingers at
the slow-moving creature on the hearthrug. “Spunkie, when I am your
mistress, you'll have to change either your name or your nature. As if
I were going to have such a bunch of independent moderation as you
masquerading as an understudy to my frisky little Spunk!”

Everybody laughed. William regarded his namesake with fond eyes as he
said:

“Spunkie doesn't seem to be worrying.” The cat had jumped into Billy's
lap with a matter-of-course air that was unmistakable--and to Bertram,
adorable. Bertram's eyes, as they rested on Billy, were even fonder than
were his brother's.

“I don't think any one is--_worrying_,” he said with quiet emphasis.

Billy smiled.

“I should think they might be,” she answered. “Only think how dreadfully
upsetting I was in the first place!”

William's beaming face grew a little stern.

“Nobody knew it but Kate--and she didn't _know_ it; she only imagined
it,” he said tersely.

Billy shook her head.

“I'm not so sure,” she demurred. “As I look back at it now, I think I
can discern a few evidences myself--that I was upsetting. I was a bother
to Bertram in his painting, I am sure.”

“You were an inspiration,” corrected Bertram. “Think of the posing you
did for me.”

A swift something like a shadow crossed Billy's face; but before her
lover could question its meaning, it was gone.

“And I know I was a torment to Cyril.” Billy had turned to the musician
now.

“Well, I admit you were a little--upsetting, at times,” retorted that
individual, with something of his old imperturbable rudeness.

“Nonsense!” cut in William, sharply. “You were never anything but a
comfort in the house, Billy, my dear--and you never will be.”

“Thank you,” murmured Billy, demurely. “I'll remember that--when Pete
and I disagree about the table decorations, and Dong Ling doesn't like
the way I want my soup seasoned.”

An anxious frown showed on Bertram's face.

“Billy,” he said in a low voice, as the others laughed at her sally,
“you needn't have Pete nor Dong Ling here if you don't want them.”

“Don't want them!” echoed Billy, indignantly. “Of course I want them!”

“But--Pete _is_ old, and--”

“Yes; and where's he grown old? For whom has he worked the last fifty
years, while he's been growing old? I wonder if you think I'd let Pete
leave this house as long as he _wants_ to stay! As for Dong Ling--”

A sudden movement of Bertram's hand arrested her words. She looked up to
find Pete in the doorway.

“Dinner is served, sir,” announced the old butler, his eyes on his
master's face.

William rose with alacrity, and gave his arm to Aunt Hannah.

“Well, I'm sure we're ready for dinner,” he declared.

It was a good dinner, and it was well served. It could scarcely have
been otherwise with Dong Ling in the kitchen and Pete in the dining-room
doing their utmost to please. But even had the turkey been tough instead
of tender, and even had the pies been filled with sawdust instead of
with delicious mincemeat, it is doubtful if four at the table would have
known the difference: Cyril and Marie at one end were discussing where
to put their new sideboard in their dining-room, and Bertram and Billy
at the other were talking of the next Thanksgiving, when, according to
Bertram, the Strata would have the “dearest little mistress that ever
was born.” As if, under these circumstances, the tenderness of the
turkey or the toothsomeness of the mince pie mattered! To Aunt Hannah
and William, in the centre of the table, however, it did matter; so it
was well, of course, that the dinner was a good one.

“And now,” said Cyril, when dinner was over, “suppose you come up and
see the rug.”

In compliance with this suggestion, the six trailed up the long flights
of stairs then, Billy carrying an extra shawl for Aunt Hannah--Cyril's
rooms were always cool.

“Oh, yes, I knew we should need it,” she nodded to Bertram, as she
picked up the shawl from the hall stand where she had left it when she
came in. “That's why I brought it.”

“Oh, my grief and conscience, Cyril, how _can_ you stand it?--to climb
stairs like this,” panted Aunt Hannah, as she reached the top of the
last flight and dropped breathlessly into the nearest chair--from which
Marie had rescued a curtain just in time.

“Well, I'm not sure I could--if I were always to eat a Thanksgiving
dinner just before,” laughed Cyril. “Maybe I ought to have waited and
let you rest an hour or two.”

“But 'twould have been too dark, then, to see the rug,” objected Marie.
“It's a genuine Persian--a Kirman, you know; and I'm so proud of it,”
 she added, turning to the others. “I wanted you to see the colors by
daylight. Cyril likes it better, anyhow, in the daytime.”

“Fancy Cyril _liking_ any sort of a rug at any time,” chuckled Bertram,
his eyes on the rich, softly blended colors of the rug before him.
“Honestly, Miss Marie,” he added, turning to the little bride elect,
“how did you ever manage to get him to buy _any_ rug? He won't have so
much as a ravelling on the floor up here to walk on.”

A startled dismay came into Marie's blue eyes.

“Why, I thought he wanted rugs,” she faltered. “I'm sure he said--”

“Of course I want rugs,” interrupted Cyril, irritably. “I want them
everywhere except in my own especial den. You don't suppose I want to
hear other people clattering over bare floors all day, do you?”

“Of course not!” Bertram's face was preternaturally grave as he turned
to the little music teacher. “I hope, Miss Marie, that you wear rubber
heels on your shoes,” he observed solicitously.

Even Cyril laughed at this, though all he said was:

“Come, come, I got you up here to look at the rug.”

Bertram, however, was not to be silenced.

“And another thing, Miss Marie,” he resumed, with the air of a true and
tried adviser. “Just let me give you a pointer. I've lived with your
future husband a good many years, and I know what I'm talking about.”

“Bertram, be still,” growled Cyril.

Bertram refused to be still.

“Whenever you want to know anything about Cyril, listen to his playing.
For instance: if, after dinner, you hear a dreamy waltz or a sleepy
nocturne, you may know that all is well. But if on your ears there falls
anything like a dirge, or the wail of a lost spirit gone mad, better
look to your soup and see if it hasn't been scorched, or taste of your
pudding and see if you didn't put in salt instead of sugar.”

“Bertram, will you be still?” cut in Cyril, testily, again.

“After all, judging from what Billy tells me,” resumed Bertram,
cheerfully, “what I've said won't be so important to you, for you aren't
the kind that scorches soups or uses salt for sugar. So maybe I'd better
put it to you this way: if you want a new sealskin coat or an extra
diamond tiara, tackle him when he plays like this!” And with a swift
turn Bertram dropped himself to the piano stool and dashed into a
rollicking melody that half the newsboys of Boston were whistling.

What happened next was a surprise to every one. Bertram, very much as
if he were a naughty little boy, was jerked by a wrathful brother's hand
off the piano stool. The next moment the wrathful brother himself sat at
the piano, and there burst on five pairs of astonished ears a crashing
dissonance which was but the prelude to music such as few of the party
often heard.

Spellbound they listened while rippling runs and sonorous harmonies
filled the room to overflowing, as if under the fingers of the player
there were--not the keyboard of a piano--but the violins, flutes,
cornets, trombones, bass viols and kettledrums of a full orchestra.

Billy, perhaps, of them all, best understood. She knew that in those
tripping melodies and crashing chords were Cyril's joy at the presence
of Marie, his wrath at the flippancy of Bertram, his ecstasy at that for
which the rug and curtains stood--the little woman sewing in the radiant
circle of a shaded lamp. Billy knew that all this and more were finding
voice at Cyril's finger tips. The others, too, understood in a way; but
they, unlike Billy, were not in the habit of finding on a few score bits
of wood and ivory a vent for their moods and fancies.

The music was softer now. The resounding chords and purling runs had
become a bell-like melody that wound itself in and out of a maze of
exquisite harmonies, now hiding, now coming out clear and unafraid, like
a mountain stream emerging into a sunlit meadow from the leafy shadows
of its forest home.

In a breathless hush the melody quivered into silence. It was Bertram
who broke the pause with a long-drawn:

“By George!” Then, a little unsteadily: “If it's I that set you going
like that, old chap, I'll come up and play ragtime every day!”

Cyril shrugged his shoulders and got to his feet.

“If you've seen all you want of the rug we'll go down-stairs,” he said
nonchalantly.

“But we haven't!” chorussed several indignant voices. And for the next
few minutes not even the owner of the beautiful Kirman could find any
fault with the quantity or the quality of the attention bestowed on
his new possession. But Billy, under cover of the chatter, said
reproachfully in his ear:

“Oh, Cyril, to think you can play like that--and won't--on demand!”

“I can't--on demand,” shrugged Cyril again.

On the way down-stairs they stopped at William's rooms.

“I want you to see a couple of Batterseas I got last week,” cried
the collector eagerly, as he led the way to the black velvet square.
“They're fine--and I think she looks like you,” he finished, turning
to Billy, and holding out one of the knobs, on which was a beautifully
executed miniature of a young girl with dark, dreamy eyes.

“Oh, how pretty!” exclaimed Marie, over Billy's shoulder. “But what are
they?”

The collector turned, his face alight.

“Mirror knobs. I've got lots of them. Would you like to see
them--really? They're right here.”

The next minute Marie found herself looking into a cabinet where lay a
score or more of round and oval discs of glass, porcelain, and metal,
framed in silver, gilt, and brass, and mounted on long spikes.

“Oh, how pretty,” cried Marie again; “but how--how queer! Tell me about
them, please.”

William drew a long breath. His eyes glistened. William loved to
talk--when he had a curio and a listener.

“I will. Our great-grandmothers used them, you know, to support their
mirrors, or to fasten back their curtains,” he explained ardently.
“Now here's another Battersea enamel, but it isn't so good as my new
ones--that face is almost a caricature.”

“But what a beautiful ship--on that round one!” exclaimed Marie. “And
what's this one?--glass?”

“Yes; but that's not so rare as the others. Still, it's pretty enough.
Did you notice this one, with the bright red and blue and green on the
white background?--regular Chinese mode of decoration, that is.”

“Er--any time, William,” began Bertram, mischievously; but William did
not seem to hear.

“Now in this corner,” he went on, warming to his subject, “are
the enamelled porcelains. They were probably made at the Worcester
works--England, you know; and I think many of them are quite as pretty
as the Batterseas. You see it was at Worcester that they invented
that variation of the transfer printing process that they called bat
printing, where they used oil instead of ink, and gelatine instead of
paper. Now engravings for that kind of printing were usually in stipple
work--dots, you know--so the prints on these knobs can easily be
distinguished from those of the transfer printing. See? Now, this one
is--”

“Er, of course, William, any time--” interposed Bertram again, his eyes
twinkling.

William stopped with a laugh.

“Yes, I know. 'Tis time I talked of something else, Bertram,” he
conceded.

“But 'twas lovely, and I _was_ interested, really,” claimed Marie.
“Besides, there are such a lot of things here that I'd like to see,” she
finished, turning slowly about.

“These are what he was collecting last year,” murmured Billy, hovering
over a small cabinet where were some beautiful specimens of antique
jewelry brooches, necklaces, armlets, Rajah rings, and anklets, gorgeous
in color and exquisite in workmanship.

“Well, here is something you _will_ enjoy,” declared Bertram, with an
airy flourish. “Do you see those teapots? Well, we can have tea every
day in the year, and not use one of them but five times. I've counted.
There are exactly seventy-three,” he concluded, as he laughingly led the
way from the room.

“How about leap year?” quizzed Billy.

“Ho! Trust Will to find another 'Old Blue' or a 'perfect treasure of a
black basalt' by that time,” shrugged Bertram.

Below William's rooms was the floor once Bertram's, but afterwards given
over to the use of Billy and Aunt Hannah. The rooms were open to-day,
and were bright with sunshine and roses; but they were very plainly
unoccupied.

“And you don't use them yet?” remonstrated Billy, as she paused at an
open door.

“No. These are Mrs. Bertram Henshaw's rooms,” said the youngest Henshaw
brother in a voice that made Billy hurry away with a dimpling blush.

“They were Billy's--and they can never seem any one's but Billy's, now,”
 declared William to Marie, as they went down the stairs.

“And now for the den and some good stories before the fire,” proposed
Bertram, as the six reached the first floor again.

“But we haven't seen your pictures, yet,” objected Billy.

Bertram made a deprecatory gesture.

“There's nothing much--” he began; but he stopped at once, with an odd
laugh. “Well, I sha'n't say _that_,” he finished, flinging open the door
of his studio, and pressing a button that flooded the room with light.
The next moment, as they stood before those plaques and panels and
canvases--on each of which was a pictured “Billy”--they understood the
change in his sentence, and they laughed appreciatively.

“'Much,' indeed!” exclaimed William.

“Oh, how lovely!” breathed Marie.

“My grief and conscience, Bertram! All these--and of Billy? I knew you
had a good many, but--” Aunt Hannah paused impotently, her eyes going
from Bertram's face to the pictures again.

“But how--when did you do them?” queried Marie.

“Some of them from memory. More of them from life. A lot of them were
just sketches that I did when she was here in the house four or five
years ago,” answered Bertram; “like this, for instance.” And he pulled
into a better light a picture of a laughing, dark-eyed girl holding
against her cheek a small gray kitten, with alert, bright eyes. “The
original and only Spunk,” he announced.

“What a dear little cat!” cried Marie.

“You should have seen it--in the flesh,” remarked Cyril, dryly. “No
paint nor painter could imprison that untamed bit of Satanic mischief on
any canvas that ever grew!”

Everybody laughed--everybody but Billy. Billy, indeed, of them all, had
been strangely silent ever since they entered the studio. She stood now
a little apart. Her eyes were wide, and a bit frightened. Her fingers
were twisting the corners of her handkerchief nervously. She was looking
to the right and to the left, and everywhere she saw--herself.

Sometimes it was her full face, sometimes her profile; sometimes there
were only her eyes peeping from above a fan, or peering from out brown
shadows of nothingness. Once it was merely the back of her head showing
the mass of waving hair with its high lights of burnished bronze. Again
it was still the back of her head with below it the bare, slender
neck and the scarf-draped shoulders. In this picture the curve of a
half-turned cheek showed plainly, and in the background was visible
a hand holding four playing cards, at which the pictured girl was
evidently looking. Sometimes it was a merry Billy with dancing eyes;
sometimes a demure Billy with long lashes caressing a flushed cheek.
Sometimes it was a wistful Billy with eyes that looked straight into
yours with peculiar appeal. But always it was--Billy.

“There, I think the tilt of this chin is perfect.” It was Bertram
speaking.

Billy gave a sudden cry. Her face whitened. She stumbled forward.

“No, no, Bertram, you--you didn't mean the--the tilt of the chin,” she
faltered wildly.

The man turned in amazement.

“Why--Billy!” he stammered. “Billy, what is it?”

The girl fell back at once. She tried to laugh lightly. She had seen the
dismayed questioning in her lover's eyes, and in the eyes of William and
the others.

“N-nothing,” she gesticulated hurriedly. “It was nothing at all, truly.”

“But, Billy, it _was_ something.” Bertram's eyes were still troubled.
“Was it the picture? I thought you liked this picture.”

Billy laughed again--this time more naturally.

“Bertram, I'm ashamed of you--expecting me to say I 'like' any of this,”
 she scolded, with a wave of her hands toward the omnipresent Billy.
“Why, I feel as if I were in a room with a thousand mirrors, and that
I'd been discovered putting rouge on my cheeks and lampblack on my
eyebrows!”

William laughed fondly. Aunt Hannah and Marie gave an indulgent smile.
Cyril actually chuckled. Bertram only still wore a puzzled expression as
he laid aside the canvas in his hands.

Billy examined intently a sketch she had found with its back to the
wall. It was not a pretty sketch; it was not even a finished one,
and Billy did not in the least care what it was. But her lips cried
interestedly:

“Oh, Bertram, what is this?”

There was no answer. Bertram was still engaged, apparently, in putting
away some sketches. Over by the doorway leading to the den Marie and
Aunt Hannah, followed by William and Cyril, were just disappearing
behind a huge easel. In another minute the merry chatter of their voices
came from the room beyond. Bertram hurried then straight across the
studio to the girl still bending over the sketch in the corner.

“Bertram!” gasped Billy, as a kiss brushed her cheek.

“Pooh! They're gone. Besides, what if they did see? Billy, what was the
matter with the tilt of that chin?”

Billy gave an hysterical little laugh--at least, Bertram tried to assure
himself that it was a laugh, though it had sounded almost like a sob.

“Bertram, if you say another word about--about the tilt of that chin, I
shall _scream!_” she panted.

“Why, Billy!”

With a nervous little movement Billy turned and began to reverse the
canvases nearest her.

“Come, sir,” she commanded gayly. “Billy has been on exhibition
quite long enough. It is high time she was turned face to the wall to
meditate, and grow more modest.”

Bertram did not answer. Neither did he make a move to assist her. His
ardent gray eyes were following her slim, graceful figure admiringly.

“Billy, it doesn't seem true, yet, that you're really mine,” he said at
last, in a low voice shaken with emotion.

Billy turned abruptly. A peculiar radiance shone in her eyes and
glorified her face. As she stood, she was close to a picture on an easel
and full in the soft glow of the shaded lights above it.

“Then you _do_ want me,” she began, “--just _me!_--not to--” she stopped
short. The man opposite had taken an eager step toward her. On his
face was the look she knew so well, the look she had come almost to
dread--the “painting look.”

“Billy, stand just as you are,” he was saying. “Don't move. Jove! But
that effect is perfect with those dark shadows beyond, and just your
hair and face and throat showing. I declare, I've half a mind to
sketch--” But Billy, with a little cry, was gone.



CHAPTER X

A JOB FOR PETE--AND FOR BERTRAM


The early days in December were busy ones, certainly, in the little
house on Corey Hill. Marie was to be married the twelfth. It was to be
a home wedding, and a very simple one--according to Billy, and according
to what Marie had said it was to be. Billy still serenely spoke of it
as a “simple affair,” but Marie was beginning to be fearful. As the
days passed, bringing with them more and more frequent evidences either
tangible or intangible of orders to stationers, caterers, and florists,
her fears found voice in a protest.

“But Billy, it was to be a _simple_ wedding,” she cried.

“And so it is.”

“But what is this I hear about a breakfast?”

Billy's chin assumed its most stubborn squareness.

“I don't know, I'm sure, what you did hear,” she retorted calmly.

“Billy!”

Billy laughed. The chin was just as stubborn, but the smiling lips above
it graced it with an air of charming concession.

“There, there, dear,” coaxed the mistress of Hillside, “don't fret.
Besides, I'm sure I should think you, of all people, would want your
guests _fed!_”

“But this is so elaborate, from what I hear.”

“Nonsense! Not a bit of it.”

“Rosa says there'll be salads and cakes and ices--and I don't know what
all.”

Billy looked concerned.

“Well, of course, Marie, if you'd _rather_ have oatmeal and doughnuts,”
 she began with kind solicitude; but she got no farther.

“Billy!” besought the bride elect. “Won't you be serious? And there's
the cake in wedding boxes, too.”

“I know, but boxes are so much easier and cleaner than--just fingers,”
 apologized an anxiously serious voice.

Marie answered with an indignant, grieved glance and hurried on.

“And the flowers--roses, dozens of them, in December! Billy, I can't let
you do all this for me.”

“Nonsense, dear!” laughed Billy. “Why, I love to do it. Besides, when
you're gone, just think how lonesome I'll be! I shall have to adopt
somebody else then--now that Mary Jane has proved to be nothing but a
disappointing man instead of a nice little girl like you,” she finished
whimsically.

Marie did not smile. The frown still lay between her delicate brows.

“And for my trousseau--there were so many things that you simply would
buy!”

“I didn't get one of the egg-beaters,” Billy reminded her anxiously.

Marie smiled now, but she shook her head, too.

“Billy, I cannot have you do all this for me.”

“Why not?”

At the unexpectedly direct question, Marie fell back a little.

“Why, because I--I can't,” she stammered. “I can't get them for myself,
and--and--”

“Don't you love me?”

A pink flush stole to Marie's face.

“Indeed I do, dearly.”

“Don't I love you?”

The flush deepened.

“I--I hope so.”

“Then why won't you let me do what I want to, and be happy in it? Money,
just money, isn't any good unless you can exchange it for something you
want. And just now I want pink roses and ice cream and lace flounces
for you. Marie,”--Billy's voice trembled a little--“I never had a sister
till I had you, and I have had such a good time buying things that I
thought you wanted! But, of course, if you don't want them--” The words
ended in a choking sob, and down went Billy's head into her folded arms
on the desk before her.

Marie sprang to her feet and cuddled the bowed head in a loving embrace.

“But I do want them, dear; I want them all--every single one,” she
urged. “Now promise me--promise me that you'll do them all, just as
you'd planned! You will, won't you?”

There was the briefest of hesitations, then came the muffled reply:

“Yes--if you really want them.”

“I do, dear--indeed I do. I love pretty weddings, and I--I always hoped
that I could have one--if I ever married. So you must know, dear, how I
really do want all those things,” declared Marie, fervently. “And now I
must go. I promised to meet Cyril at Park Street at three o'clock.”
 And she hurried from the room--and not until she was half-way to her
destination did it suddenly occur to her that she had been urging,
actually urging Miss Billy Neilson to buy for her pink roses, ice cream,
and lace flounces.

Her cheeks burned with shame then. But almost at once she smiled.

“Now wasn't that just like Billy?” she was saying to herself, with a
tender glow in her eyes.


It was early in December that Pete came one day with a package for Marie
from Cyril. Marie was not at home, and Billy herself went downstairs to
take the package from the old man's hands.

“Mr. Cyril said to give it to Miss Hawthorn,” stammered the old servant,
his face lighting up as Billy entered the room; “but I'm sure he
wouldn't mind _your_ taking it.”

“I'm afraid I'll have to take it, Pete, unless you want to carry it
back with you,” she smiled. “I'll see that Miss Hawthorn has it the very
first moment she comes in.”

“Thank you, Miss. It does my old eyes good to see your bright face.” He
hesitated, then turned slowly. “Good day, Miss Billy.”

Billy laid the package on the table. Her eyes were thoughtful as she
looked after the old man, who was now almost to the door. Something in
his bowed form appealed to her strangely. She took a quick step toward
him.

“You'll miss Mr. Cyril, Pete,” she said pleasantly.

The old man stopped at once and turned. He lifted his head a little
proudly.

“Yes, Miss. I--I was there when he was born. Mr. Cyril's a fine man.”

“Indeed he is. Perhaps it's your good care that's helped, some--to make
him so,” smiled the girl, vaguely wishing that she could say something
that would drive the wistful look from the dim old eyes before her.

For a moment Billy thought she had succeeded. The old servant drew
himself stiffly erect. In his eyes shone the loyal pride of more than
fifty years' honest service. Almost at once, however, the pride died
away, and the wistfulness returned.

“Thank ye, Miss; but I don't lay no claim to that, of course,” he said.
“Mr. Cyril's a fine man, and we shall miss him; but--I cal'late changes
must come--to all of us.”

Billy's brown eyes grew a little misty.

“I suppose they must,” she admitted.

The old man hesitated; then, as if impelled by some hidden force, he
plunged on:

“Yes; and they'll be comin' to you one of these days, Miss, and that's
what I was wantin' to speak to ye about. I understand, of course, that
when you get there you'll be wantin' younger blood to serve ye. My feet
ain't so spry as they once was, and my old hands blunder sometimes,
in spite of what my head bids 'em do. So I wanted to tell ye--that of
course I shouldn't expect to stay. I'd go.”

As he said the words, Pete stood with head and shoulders erect, his eyes
looking straight forward but not at Billy.

“Don't you _want_ to stay?” The girlish voice was a little reproachful.

Pete's head drooped.

“Not if--I'm not wanted,” came the husky reply.

With an impulsive movement Billy came straight to the old man's side and
held out her hand.

“Pete!”

Amazement, incredulity, and a look that was almost terror crossed the
old man's face; then a flood of dull red blotted them all out and left
only worshipful rapture. With a choking cry he took the slim little hand
in both his rough and twisted ones much as if he were possessing himself
of a treasured bit of eggshell china.

“Miss Billy!”

“Pete, there aren't a pair of feet in Boston, nor a pair of hands,
either, that I'd rather have serve me than yours, no matter if they
stumble and blunder all day! I shall love stumbles and blunders--if you
make them. Now run home, and don't ever let me hear another syllable
about your leaving!”

They were not the words Billy had intended to say. She had meant to
speak of his long, faithful service, and of how much they appreciated
it; but, to her surprise, Billy found her own eyes wet and her own voice
trembling, and the words that she would have said she found fast shut
in her throat. So there was nothing to do but to stammer out
something--anything, that would help to keep her from yielding to that
absurd and awful desire to fall on the old servant's neck and cry.

“Not another syllable!” she repeated sternly.

“Miss Billy!” choked Pete again. Then he turned and fled with anything
but his usual dignity.

Bertram called that evening. When Billy came to him in the living-room,
her slender self was almost hidden behind the swirls of damask linen in
her arms.

Bertram's eyes grew mutinous.

“Do you expect me to hug all that?” he demanded.

Billy flashed him a mischievous glance.

“Of course not! You don't _have_ to hug anything, you know.”

For answer he impetuously swept the offending linen into the nearest
chair and drew the girl into his arms.

“Oh! And see how you've crushed poor Marie's table-cloth!” she cried,
with reproachful eyes.

Bertram sniffed imperturbably.

“I'm not sure but I'd like to crush Marie,” he alleged.

“Bertram!”

“I can't help it. See here, Billy.” He loosened his clasp and held the
girl off at arm's length, regarding her with stormy eyes. “It's Marie,
Marie, Marie--always. If I telephone in the morning, you've gone
shopping with Marie. If I want you in the afternoon for something,
you're at the dressmaker's with Marie. If I call in the evening--”

“I'm here,” interrupted Billy, with decision.

“Oh, yes, you're here,” admitted Bertram, aggrievedly, “and so are
dozens of napkins, miles of table-cloths, and yards upon yards of lace
and flummydiddles you call 'doilies.' They all belong to Marie, and they
fill your arms and your thoughts full, until there isn't an inch of room
for me. Billy, when is this thing going to end?”

Billy laughed softly. Her eyes danced.

“The twelfth;--that is, there'll be a--pause, then.”

“Well, I'm thankful if--eh?” broke off the man, with a sudden change of
manner. “What do you mean by 'a pause'?”

Billy cast down her eyes demurely.

“Well, of course _this_ ends the twelfth with Marie's wedding; but
I've sort of regarded it as an--understudy for one that's coming next
October, you see.”

“Billy, you darling!” breathed a supremely happy voice in a shell-like
ear--Billy was not at arm's length now.

Billy smiled, but she drew away with gentle firmness.

“And now I must go back to my sewing,” she said.

Bertram's arms did not loosen. His eyes had grown mutinous again.

“That is,” she amended, “I must be practising my part of--the
understudy, you know.”

“You darling!” breathed Bertram again; this time, however, he let her
go.

“But, honestly, is it all necessary?” he sighed despairingly, as she
seated herself and gathered the table-cloth into her lap. “Do you have
to do so much of it all?”

“I do,” smiled Billy, “unless you want your brother to run the risk of
leading his bride to the altar and finding her robed in a kitchen apron
with an egg-beater in her hand for a bouquet.”

Bertram laughed.

“Is it so bad as that?”

“No, of course not--quite. But never have I seen a bride so utterly
oblivious to clothes as Marie was till one day in despair I told her
that Cyril never could bear a dowdy woman.”

“As if Cyril, in the old days, ever could bear any sort of woman!”
 scoffed Bertram, merrily.

“I know; but I didn't mention that part,” smiled Billy. “I just singled
out the dowdy one.”

“Did it work?”

Billy made a gesture of despair.

“Did it work! It worked too well. Marie gave me one horrified look,
then at once and immediately she became possessed with the idea that
she _was_ a dowdy woman. And from that day to this she has pursued every
lurking wrinkle and every fold awry, until her dressmaker's life isn't
worth the living; and I'm beginning to think mine isn't, either, for I
have to assure her at least four times every day now that she is _not_ a
dowdy woman.”

“You poor dear,” laughed Bertram. “No wonder you don't have time to give
to me!”

A peculiar expression crossed Billy's face.

“Oh, but I'm not the _only_ one who, at times, is otherwise engaged,
sir,” she reminded him.

“What do you mean?”

“There was yesterday, and last Monday, and last week Wednesday, and--”

“Oh, but you _let_ me off, then,” argued Bertram, anxiously. “And you
said--”

“That I didn't wish to interfere with your work--which was quite true,”
 interrupted Billy in her turn, smoothly. “By the way,”--Billy was
examining her stitches very closely now--“how is Miss Winthrop's
portrait coming on?”

“Splendidly!--that is, it _was_, until she began to put off the sittings
for her pink teas and folderols. She's going to Washington next week,
too, to be gone nearly a fortnight,” finished Bertram, gloomily.

“Aren't you putting more work than usual into this one--and more
sittings?”

“Well, yes,” laughed Bertram, a little shortly. “You see, she's changed
the pose twice already.”

“Changed it!”

“Yes. Wasn't satisfied. Fancied she wanted it different.”

“But can't you--don't you have something to say about it?”

“Oh, yes, of course; and she claims she'll yield to my judgment, anyhow.
But what's the use? She's been a spoiled darling all her life, and in
the habit of having her own way about everything. Naturally, under those
circumstances, I can't expect to get a satisfactory portrait, if she's
out of tune with the pose. Besides, I will own, so far her suggestions
have made for improvement--probably because she's been happy in making
them, so her expression has been good.”

Billy wet her lips.

“I saw her the other night,” she said lightly. (If the lightness was
a little artificial Bertram did not seem to notice it.) “She is
certainly--very beautiful.”

“Yes.” Bertram got to his feet and began to walk up and down the little
room. His eyes were alight. On his face the “painting look” was king.
“It's going to mean a lot to me--this picture, Billy. In the first place
I'm just at the point in my career where a big success would mean a
lot--and where a big failure would mean more. And this portrait is bound
to be one or the other from the very nature of the thing.”

“I-is it?” Billy's voice was a little faint.

“Yes. First, because of who the sitter is, and secondly because of what
she is. She is, of course, the most famous subject I've had, and half
the artistic world knows by this time that Marguerite Winthrop is being
done by Henshaw. You can see what it'll be--if I fail.”

“But you won't fail, Bertram!”

The artist lifted his chin and threw back his shoulders.

“No, of course not; but--” He hesitated, frowned, and dropped himself
into a chair. His eyes studied the fire moodily. “You see,” he resumed,
after a moment, “there's a peculiar, elusive something about her
expression--” (Billy stirred restlessly and gave her thread so savage a
jerk that it broke)”--a something that isn't easily caught by the brush.
Anderson and Fullam--big fellows, both of them--didn't catch it. At
least, I've understood that neither her family nor her friends are
satisfied with _their_ portraits. And to succeed where Anderson and
Fullam failed--Jove! Billy, a chance like that doesn't come to a fellow
twice in a lifetime!” Bertram was out of his chair, again, tramping up
and down the little room.

Billy tossed her work aside and sprang to her feet. Her eyes, too, were
alight, now.

“But you aren't going to fail, dear,” she cried, holding out both her
hands. “You're going to succeed!”

Bertram caught the hands and kissed first one then the other of their
soft little palms.

“Of course I am,” he agreed passionately, leading her to the sofa, and
seating himself at her side.

“Yes, but you must really _feel_ it,” she urged; “feel the '_sure_' in
yourself. You have to!--to doing things. That's what I told Mary Jane
yesterday, when he was running on about what _he_ wanted to do--in his
singing, you know.”

Bertram stiffened a little. A quick frown came to his face.

“Mary Jane, indeed! Of all the absurd names to give a full-grown,
six-foot man! Billy, do, for pity's sake, call him by his name--if he's
got one.”

Billy broke into a rippling laugh.

“I wish I could, dear,” she sighed ingenuously.

“Honestly, it bothers me because I _can't_ think of him as anything but
'Mary Jane.' It seems so silly!”

“It certainly does--when one remembers his beard.”

“Oh, he's shaved that off now. He looks rather better, too.”

Bertram turned a little sharply.

“Do you see the fellow--often?”

Billy laughed merrily.

“No. He's about as disgruntled as you are over the way the wedding
monopolizes everything. He's been up once or twice to see Aunt Hannah
and to get acquainted, as he expresses it, and once he brought up some
music and we sang; but he declares the wedding hasn't given him half a
show.”

“Indeed! Well, that's a pity, I'm sure,” rejoined Bertram, icily.

Billy turned in slight surprise.

“Why, Bertram, don't you like Mary Jane?”

“Billy, for heaven's sake! _Hasn't_ he got any name but that?”

Billy clapped her hands together suddenly.

“There, that makes me think. He told Aunt Hannah and me to guess what
his name was, and we never hit it once. What do you think it is? The
initials are M. J.”

“I couldn't say, I'm sure. What is it?”

“Oh, he didn't tell us. You see he left us to guess it.”

“Did he?”

“Yes,” mused Billy, abstractedly, her eyes on the dancing fire. The next
minute she stirred and settled herself more comfortably in the curve
of her lover's arm. “But there! who cares what his name is? I'm sure I
don't.”

“Nor I,” echoed Bertram in a voice that he tried to make not too
fervent. He had not forgotten Billy's surprised: “Why, Bertram, don't
you like Mary Jane?” and he did not like to call forth a repetition of
it. Abruptly, therefore, he changed the subject. “By the way, what did
you do to Pete to-day?” he asked laughingly. “He came home in a seventh
heaven of happiness babbling of what an angel straight from the sky Miss
Billy was. Naturally I agreed with him on that point. But what did you
do to him?”

Billy smiled.

“Nothing--only engaged him for our butler--for life.”

“Oh, I see. That was dear of you, Billy.”

“As if I'd do anything else! And now for Dong Ling, I suppose, some
day.”

Bertram chuckled.

“Well, maybe I can help you there,” he hinted. “You see, his Celestial
Majesty came to me himself the other day, and said, after sundry and
various preliminaries, that he should be 'velly much glad' when the
'Little Missee' came to live with me, for then he could go back to China
with a heart at rest, as he had money 'velly much plenty' and didn't
wish to be 'Melican man' any longer.”

“Dear me,” smiled Billy, “what a happy state of affairs--for him. But
for you--do you realize, young man, what that means for you? A new wife
and a new cook all at once? And you know I'm not Marie!”

“Ho! I'm not worrying,” retorted Bertram with a contented smile;
“besides, as perhaps you noticed, it wasn't Marie that I asked--to marry
me!”




CHAPTER XI. A CLOCK AND AUNT HANNAH


Mrs. Kate Hartwell, the Henshaw brothers' sister from the West, was
expected on the tenth. Her husband could not come, she had written, but
she would bring with her, little Kate, the youngest child. The boys,
Paul and Egbert, would stay with their father.

Billy received the news of little Kate's coming with outspoken delight.

“The very thing!” she cried. “We'll have her for a flower girl. She was
a dear little creature, as I remember her.”

Aunt Hannah gave a sudden low laugh.

“Yes, I remember,” she observed. “Kate told me, after you spent the
first day with her, that you graciously informed her that little
Kate was almost as nice as Spunk. Kate did not fully appreciate the
compliment, I fear.”

Billy made a wry face.

“Did I say that? Dear me! I _was_ a terror in those days, wasn't I?
But then,” and she laughed softly, “really, Aunt Hannah, that was the
prettiest thing I knew how to say, for I considered Spunk the top-notch
of desirability.”

“I think I should have liked to know Spunk,” smiled Marie from the other
side of the sewing table.

“He was a dear,” declared Billy. “I had another 'most as good when I
first came to Hillside, but he got lost. For a time it seemed as if I
never wanted another, but I've about come to the conclusion now that I
do, and I've told Bertram to find one for me if he can. You see I
shall be lonesome after you're gone, Marie, and I'll have to have
_something_,” she finished mischievously.

“Oh, I don't mind the inference--as long as I know your admiration of
cats,” laughed Marie.

“Let me see; Kate writes she is coming the tenth,” murmured Aunt Hannah,
going back to the letter in her hand.

“Good!” nodded Billy. “That will give time to put little Kate through
her paces as flower girl.”

“Yes, and it will give Big Kate time to _try_ to make your breakfast a
supper, and your roses pinks--or sunflowers,” cut in a new voice, dryly.

“Cyril!” chorussed the three ladies in horror, adoration, and
amusement--according to whether the voice belonged to Aunt Hannah,
Marie, or Billy.

Cyril shrugged his shoulders and smiled.

“I beg your pardon,” he apologized; “but Rosa said you were in here
sewing, and I told her not to bother. I'd announce myself. Just as I
got to the door I chanced to hear Billy's speech, and I couldn't
resist making the amendment. Maybe you've forgotten Kate's love of
managing--but I haven't,” he finished, as he sauntered over to the chair
nearest Marie.

“No, I haven't--forgotten,” observed Billy, meaningly.

“Nor I--nor anybody else,” declared a severe voice--both the words and
the severity being most extraordinary as coming from the usually gentle
Aunt Hannah.

“Oh, well, never mind,” spoke up Billy, quickly. “Everything's all right
now, so let's forget it. She always meant it for kindness, I'm sure.”

“Even when she told you in the first place what a--er--torment you were
to us?” quizzed Cyril.

“Yes,” flashed Billy. “She was being kind to _you_, then.”

“Humph!” vouchsafed Cyril.

For a moment no one spoke. Cyril's eyes were on Marie, who was nervously
trying to smooth back a few fluffy wisps of hair that had escaped from
restraining combs and pins.

“What's the matter with the hair, little girl?” asked Cyril in a
voice that was caressingly irritable. “You've been fussing with that
long-suffering curl for the last five minutes!”

Marie's delicate face flushed painfully.

“It's got loose--my hair,” she stammered, “and it looks so dowdy that
way!”

Billy dropped her thread suddenly. She sprang for it at once, before
Cyril could make a move to get it. She had to dive far under a chair
to capture it--which may explain why her face was so very red when she
finally reached her seat again.


On the morning of the tenth, Billy, Marie, and Aunt Hannah were once
more sewing together, this time in the little sitting-room at the end of
the hall up-stairs.

Billy's fingers, in particular, were flying very fast.

“I told John to have Peggy at the door at eleven,” she said, after a
time; “but I think I can finish running in this ribbon before then. I
haven't much to do to get ready to go.”

“I hope Kate's train won't be late,” worried Aunt Hannah.

“I hope not,” replied Billy; “but I told Rosa to delay luncheon, anyway,
till we get here. I--” She stopped abruptly and turned a listening
ear toward the door of Aunt Hannah's room, which was open. A clock was
striking. “Mercy! that can't be eleven now,” she cried. “But it must
be--it was ten before I came up-stairs.” She got to her feet hurriedly.

Aunt Hannah put out a restraining hand.

“No, no, dear, that's half-past ten.”

“But it struck eleven.”

“Yes, I know. It does--at half-past ten.”

“Why, the little wretch,” laughed Billy, dropping back into her chair
and picking up her work again. “The idea of its telling fibs like that
and frightening people half out of their lives! I'll have it fixed right
away. Maybe John can do it--he's always so handy about such things.”

“But I don't want it fixed,” demurred Aunt Hannah.

Billy stared a little.

“You don't want it fixed! Maybe you like to have it strike eleven when
it's half-past ten!” Billy's voice was merrily sarcastic.

“Y-yes, I do,” stammered the lady, apologetically. “You see, I--I worked
very hard to fix it so it would strike that way.”

“_Aunt Hannah!_”

“Well, I did,” retorted the lady, with unexpected spirit. “I wanted to
know what time it was in the night--I'm awake such a lot.”

“But I don't see.” Billy's eyes were perplexed. “Why must you make it
tell fibs in order to--to find out the truth?” she laughed.

Aunt Hannah elevated her chin a little.

“Because that clock was always striking one.”

“One!”

“Yes--half-past, you know; and I never knew which half-past it was.”

“But it must strike half-past now, just the same!”

“It does.” There was the triumphant ring of the conqueror in Aunt
Hannah's voice. “But now it strikes half-past _on the hour_, and the
clock in the hall tells me _then_ what time it is, so I don't care.”

For one more brief minute Billy stared, before a sudden light of
understanding illumined her face. Then her laugh rang out gleefully.

“Oh, Aunt Hannah, Aunt Hannah,” she gurgled. “If Bertram wouldn't
call you the limit--making a clock strike eleven so you'll know it's
half-past ten!”

Aunt Hannah colored a little, but she stood her ground.

“Well, there's only half an hour, anyway, now, that I don't know what
time it is,” she maintained, “for one or the other of those clocks
strikes the hour every thirty minutes. Even during those never-ending
three ones that strike one after the other in the middle of the night,
I can tell now, for the hall clock has a different sound for the
half-hours, you know, so I can tell whether it's one or a half-past.”

“Of course,” chuckled Billy.

“I'm sure I think it's a splendid idea,” chimed in Marie, valiantly;
“and I'm going to write it to mother's Cousin Jane right away. She's an
invalid, and she's always lying awake nights wondering what time it is.
The doctor says actually he believes she'd get well if he could find
some way of letting her know the time at night, so she'd get some sleep;
for she simply can't go to sleep till she knows. She can't bear a light
in the room, and it wakes her all up to turn an electric switch, or
anything of that kind.”

“Why doesn't she have one of those phosphorous things?” questioned
Billy.

Marie laughed quietly.

“She did. I sent her one,--and she stood it just one night.”

“Stood it!”

“Yes. She declared it gave her the creeps, and that she wouldn't have
the spooky thing staring at her all night like that. So it's got to be
something she can hear, and I'm going to tell her Mrs. Stetson's plan
right away.”

“Well, I'm sure I wish you would,” cried that lady, with prompt
interest; “and she'll like it, I'm sure. And tell her if she can hear
a _town_ clock strike, it's just the same, and even better; for there
aren't any half-hours at all to think of there.”

“I will--and I think it's lovely,” declared Marie.

“Of course it's lovely,” smiled Billy, rising; “but I fancy I'd better
go and get ready to meet Mrs. Hartwell, or the 'lovely' thing will be
telling me that it's half-past eleven!” And she tripped laughingly from
the room.

Promptly at the appointed time John with Peggy drew up before the
door, and Billy, muffled in furs, stepped into the car, which, with its
protecting top and sides and glass wind-shield, was in its winter dress.

“Yes'm, 'tis a little chilly, Miss,” said John, in answer to her
greeting, as he tucked the heavy robes about her.

“Oh, well, I shall be very comfortable, I'm sure,” smiled Billy. “Just
don't drive too rapidly, specially coming home. I shall have to get a
limousine, I think, when my ship comes in, John.”

John's grizzled old face twitched. So evident were the words that were
not spoken that Billy asked laughingly:

“Well, John, what is it?”

John reddened furiously.

“Nothing, Miss. I was only thinkin' that if you didn't 'tend ter haulin'
in so many other folks's ships, yours might get in sooner.”

“Why, John! Nonsense! I--I love to haul in other folks's ships,” laughed
the girl, embarrassedly.

“Yes, Miss; I know you do,” grunted John.

Billy colored.

“No, no--that is, I mean--I don't do it--very much,” she stammered.

John did not answer apparently; but Billy was sure she caught a
low-muttered, indignant “much!” as he snapped the door shut and took his
place at the wheel.

To herself she laughed softly. She thought she possessed the secret now
of some of John's disapproving glances toward her humble guests of the
summer before.




CHAPTER XII. SISTER KATE


At the station Mrs. Hartwell's train was found to be gratifyingly on
time; and in due course Billy was extending a cordial welcome to a tall,
handsome woman who carried herself with an unmistakable air of assured
competence. Accompanying her was a little girl with big blue eyes and
yellow curls.

“I am very glad to see you both,” smiled Billy, holding out a friendly
hand to Mrs. Hartwell, and stooping to kiss the round cheek of the
little girl.

“Thank you, you are very kind,” murmured the lady; “but--are you alone,
Billy? Where are the boys?”

“Uncle William is out of town, and Cyril is rushed to death and sent his
excuses. Bertram did mean to come, but he telephoned this morning that
he couldn't, after all. I'm sorry, but I'm afraid you'll have to make
the best of just me,” condoled Billy. “They'll be out to the house
this evening, of course--all but Uncle William. He doesn't return until
to-morrow.”

“Oh, doesn't he?” murmured the lady, reaching for her daughter's hand.

Billy looked down with a smile.

“And this is little Kate, I suppose,” she said, “whom I haven't seen for
such a long, long time. Let me see, you are how old now?”

“I'm eight. I've been eight six weeks.”

Billy's eyes twinkled.

“And you don't remember me, I suppose.”

The little girl shook her head.

“No; but I know who you are,” she added, with shy eagerness. “You're
going to be my Aunt Billy, and you're going to marry my Uncle William--I
mean, my Uncle Bertram.”

Billy's face changed color. Mrs. Hartwell gave a despairing gesture.

“Kate, my dear, I told you to be sure and remember that it was your
Uncle Bertram now. You see,” she added in a discouraged aside to Billy,
“she can't seem to forget the first one. But then, what can you expect?”
 laughed Mrs. Hartwell, a little disagreeably. “Such abrupt changes from
one brother to another are somewhat disconcerting, you know.”

Billy bit her lip. For a moment she said nothing, then, a little
constrainedly, she rejoined:

“Perhaps. Still--let us hope we have the right one, now.”

Mrs. Hartwell raised her eyebrows.

“Well, my dear, I'm not so confident of that. _My_ choice has been and
always will be--William.”

Billy bit her lip again. This time her brown eyes flashed a little.

“Is that so? But you see, after all, _you_ aren't making the--the
choice.” Billy spoke lightly, gayly; and she ended with a bright little
laugh, as if to hide any intended impertinence.

It was Mrs. Hartwell's turn to bite her lip--and she did it.

“So it seems,” she rejoined frigidly, after the briefest of pauses.

It was not until they were on their way to Corey Hill some time later
that Mrs. Hartwell turned with the question:

“Cyril is to be married in church, I suppose?”

“No. They both preferred a home wedding.”

“Oh, what a pity! Church weddings are so attractive!”

“To those who like them,” amended Billy in spite of herself.

“To every one, I think,” corrected Mrs. Hartwell, positively.

Billy laughed. She was beginning to discern that it did not do much
harm--nor much good--to disagree with her guest.

“It's in the evening, then, of course?” pursued Mrs. Hartwell.

“No; at noon.”

“Oh, how could you let them?”

“But they preferred it, Mrs. Hartwell.”

“What if they did?” retorted the lady, sharply. “Can't you do as you
please in your own home? Evening weddings are so much prettier! We can't
change now, of course, with the guests all invited. That is, I suppose
you do have guests!”

Mrs. Hartwell's voice was aggrievedly despairing.

“Oh, yes,” smiled Billy, demurely. “We have guests invited--and I'm
afraid we can't change the time.”

“No, of course not; but it's too bad. I conclude there are announcements
only, as I got no cards.

“Announcements only,” bowed Billy.

“I wish Cyril had consulted _me_, a little, about this affair.”

Billy did not answer. She could not trust herself to speak just then.
Cyril's words of two days before were in her ears: “Yes, and it will
give Big Kate time to try to make your breakfast supper, and your roses
pinks--or sunflowers.”

In a moment Mrs. Hartwell spoke again.

“Of course a noon wedding is quite pretty if you darken the rooms and
have lights--you're going to do that, I suppose?”

Billy shook her head slowly.

“I'm afraid not, Mrs. Hartwell. That isn't the plan, now.”

“Not darken the rooms!” exclaimed Mrs. Hartwell. “Why, it won't--”
 She stopped suddenly, and fell back in her seat. The look of annoyed
disappointment gave way to one of confident relief. “But then, _that
can_ be changed,” she finished serenely.

Billy opened her lips, but she shut them without speaking. After a
minute she opened them again.

“You might consult--Cyril--about that,” she said in a quiet voice.

“Yes, I will,” nodded Mrs. Hartwell, brightly. She was looking pleased
and happy again. “I love weddings. Don't you? You can _do_ so much with
them!”

“Can you?” laughed Billy, irrepressibly.

“Yes. Cyril is happy, of course. Still, I can't imagine _him_ in love
with any woman.”

“I think Marie can.”

“I suppose so. I don't seem to remember her much; still, I think I saw
her once or twice when I was on last June. Music teacher, wasn't she?”

“Yes. She is a very sweet girl.”

“Hm-m; I suppose so. Still, I think 'twould have been better if Cyril
could have selected some one that _wasn't_ musical--say a more domestic
wife. He's so terribly unpractical himself about household matters.”

Billy gave a ringing laugh and stood up. The car had come to a stop
before her own door.

“Do you? Just you wait till you see Marie's trousseau of--egg-beaters
and cake tins,” she chuckled.

Mrs. Hartwell looked blank.

“Whatever in the world do you mean, Billy?” she demanded fretfully, as
she followed her hostess from the car. “I declare! aren't you ever going
to grow beyond making those absurd remarks of yours?”

“Maybe--sometime,” laughed Billy, as she took little Kate's hand and led
the way up the steps.

Luncheon in the cozy dining-room at Hillside that day was not entirely
a success. At least there were not present exactly the harmony and
tranquillity that are conceded to be the best sauce for one's food. The
wedding, of course, was the all-absorbing topic of conversation; and
Billy, between Aunt Hannah's attempts to be polite, Marie's to be
sweet-tempered, Mrs. Hartwell's to be dictatorial, and her own to be
pacifying as well as firm, had a hard time of it. If it had not been
for two or three diversions created by little Kate, the meal would have
been, indeed, a dismal failure.

But little Kate--most of the time the personification of proper
little-girlhood--had a disconcerting faculty of occasionally dropping a
word here, or a question there, with startling effect. As, for instance,
when she asked Billy “Who's going to boss your wedding?” and again when
she calmly informed her mother that when _she_ was married she was not
going to have any wedding at all to bother with, anyhow. She was going
to elope, and she should choose somebody's chauffeur, because he'd know
how to go the farthest and fastest so her mother couldn't catch up with
her and tell her how she ought to have done it.

After luncheon Aunt Hannah went up-stairs for rest and recuperation.
Marie took little Kate and went for a brisk walk--for the same purpose.
This left Billy alone with her guest.

“Perhaps you would like a nap, too, Mrs. Hartwell,” suggested Billy,
as they passed into the living-room. There was a curious note of almost
hopefulness in her voice.

Mrs. Hartwell scorned naps, and she said so very emphatically. She said
something else, too.

“Billy, why do you always call me 'Mrs. Hartwell' in that stiff, formal
fashion? You used to call me 'Aunt Kate.'”

“But I was very young then.” Billy's voice was troubled. Billy had
been trying so hard for the last two hours to be the graciously cordial
hostess to this woman--Bertram's sister.

“Very true. Then why not 'Kate' now?”

Billy hesitated. She was wondering why it seemed so hard to call Mrs.
Hartwell “Kate.”

“Of course,” resumed the lady, “when you're Bertram's wife and my
sister--”

“Why, of course,” cried Billy, in a sudden flood of understanding.
Curiously enough, she had never before thought of Mrs. Hartwell as _her_
sister. “I shall be glad to call you 'Kate'--if you like.”

“Thank you. I shall like it very much, Billy,” nodded the other
cordially. “Indeed, my dear, I'm very fond of you, and I was delighted
to hear you were to be my sister. If only--it could have stayed William
instead of Bertram.”

“But it couldn't,” smiled Billy. “It wasn't William--that I loved.”

“But _Bertram!_--it's so absurd.”

“Absurd!” The smile was gone now.

“Yes. Forgive me, Billy, but I was about as much surprised to hear of
Bertram's engagement as I was of Cyril's.”

Billy grew a little white.

“But Bertram was never an avowed--woman-hater, like Cyril, was he?”

“'Woman-hater'--dear me, no! He was a woman-lover, always. As if his
eternal 'Face of a Girl' didn't prove that! Bertram has always loved
women--to paint. But as for his ever taking them seriously--why, Billy,
what's the matter?”

Billy had risen suddenly.

“If you'll excuse me, please, just a few minutes,” Billy said very
quietly. “I want to speak to Rosa in the kitchen. I'll be back--soon.”

In the kitchen Billy spoke to Rosa--she wondered afterwards what she
said. Certainly she did not stay in the kitchen long enough to say much.
In her own room a minute later, with the door fast closed, she took
from her table the photograph of Bertram and held it in her two hands,
talking to it softly, but a little wildly.

“I didn't listen! I didn't stay! Do you hear? I came to you. She
shall not say anything that will make trouble between you and me. I've
suffered enough through her already! And she doesn't _know_--she didn't
know before, and she doesn't now. She's only imagining. I will not
not--_not_ believe that you love me--just to paint. No matter what they
say--all of them! I _will not!_”

Billy put the photograph back on the table then, and went down-stairs to
her guest. She smiled brightly, though her face was a little pale.

“I wondered if perhaps you wouldn't like some music,” she said
pleasantly, going straight to the piano.

“Indeed I would!” agreed Mrs. Hartwell.

Billy sat down then and played--played as Mrs. Hartwell had never heard
her play before.

“Why, Billy, you amaze me,” she cried, when the pianist stopped and
whirled about. “I had no idea you could play like that!”

Billy smiled enigmatically. Billy was thinking that Mrs. Hartwell would,
indeed, have been surprised if she had known that in that playing
were herself, the ride home, the luncheon, Bertram, and the girl--whom
Bertram _did not love only to paint!_




CHAPTER XIII. CYRIL AND A WEDDING


The twelfth was a beautiful day. Clear, frosty air set the blood to
tingling and the eyes to sparkling, even if it were not your wedding
day; while if it were--

It _was_ Marie Hawthorn's wedding day, and certainly her eyes sparkled
and her blood tingled as she threw open the window of her room and
breathed long and deep of the fresh morning air before going down to
breakfast.

“They say 'Happy is the bride that the sun shines on,'” she whispered
softly to an English sparrow that cocked his eye at her from a
neighboring tree branch. “As if a bride wouldn't be happy, sun or no
sun,” she scoffed tenderly, as she turned to go down-stairs.

As it happens, however, tingling blood and sparkling eyes are a matter
of more than weather, or even weddings, as was proved a little later
when the telephone bell rang.

Kate answered the ring.

“Hullo, is that you, Kate?” called a despairing voice.

“Yes. Good morning, Bertram. Isn't this a fine day for the wedding?”

“Fine! Oh, yes, I suppose so, though I must confess I haven't noticed
it--and you wouldn't, if you had a lunatic on your hands.”

“A lunatic!”

“Yes. Maybe you have, though. Is Marie rampaging around the house like a
wild creature, and asking ten questions and making twenty threats to the
minute?”

“Certainly not! Don't be absurd, Bertram. What do you mean?”

“See here, Kate, that show comes off at twelve sharp, doesn't it?”

“Show, indeed!” retorted Kate, indignantly. “The _wedding_ is at noon
sharp--as the best man should know very well.”

“All right; then tell Billy, please, to see that it is sharp, or I won't
answer for the consequences.”

“What do you mean? What is the matter?”

“Cyril. He's broken loose at last. I've been expecting it all along.
I've simply marvelled at the meekness with which he has submitted
himself to be tied up with white ribbons and topped with roses.”

“Nonsense, Bertram!”

“Well, it amounts to that. Anyhow, he thinks it does, and he's wild. I
wish you could have heard the thunderous performance on his piano with
which he woke me up this morning. Billy says he plays everything--his
past, present, and future. All is, if he was playing his future this
morning, I pity the girl who's got to live it with him.”

“Bertram!”

Bertram chuckled remorselessly.

“Well, I do. But I'll warrant he wasn't playing his future this morning.
He was playing his present--the wedding. You see, he's just waked up to
the fact that it'll be a perfect orgy of women and other confusion,
and he doesn't like it. All the samee,{sic} I've had to assure him just
fourteen times this morning that the ring, the license, the carriage,
the minister's fee, and my sanity are all O. K. When he isn't asking
questions he's making threats to snake the parson up there an hour ahead
of time and be off with Marie before a soul comes.”

“What an absurd idea!”

“Cyril doesn't think so. Indeed, Kate, I've had a hard struggle to
convince him that the guests wouldn't think it the most delightful
experience of their lives if they should come and find the ceremony over
with and the bride gone.”

“Well, you remind Cyril, please, that there are other people besides
himself concerned in this wedding,” observed Kate, icily.

“I have,” purred Bertram, “and he says all right, let them have it,
then. He's gone now to look up proxy marriages, I believe.”

“Proxy marriages, indeed! Come, come, Bertram, I've got something to do
this morning besides to stand here listening to your nonsense. See
that you and Cyril get here on time--that's all!” And she hung up the
receiver with an impatient jerk.

She turned to confront the startled eyes of the bride elect.

“What is it? Is anything wrong--with Cyril?” faltered Marie.

Kate laughed and raised her eyebrows slightly.

“Nothing but a little stage fright, my dear.”

“Stage fright!”

“Yes. Bertram says he's trying to find some one to play his rôle, I
believe, in the ceremony.”

“_Mrs. Hartwell!_”

At the look of dismayed terror that came into Marie's face, Mrs.
Hartwell laughed reassuringly.

“There, there, dear child, don't look so horror-stricken. There probably
never was a man yet who wouldn't have fled from the wedding part of his
marriage if he could; and you know how Cyril hates fuss and feathers.
The wonder to me is that he's stood it as long as he has. I thought I
saw it coming, last night at the rehearsal--and now I know I did.”

Marie still looked distressed.

“But he never said--I thought--” She stopped helplessly.

“Of course he didn't, child. He never said anything but that he loved
you, and he never thought anything but that you were going to be his.
Men never do--till the wedding day. Then they never think of anything
but a place to run,” she finished laughingly, as she began to arrange on
a stand the quantity of little white boxes waiting for her.

“But if he'd told me--in time, I wouldn't have had a thing--but the
minister,” faltered Marie.

“And when you think so much of a pretty wedding, too? Nonsense! It isn't
good for a man, to give up to his whims like that!”

Marie's cheeks grew a deeper pink. Her nostrils dilated a little.

“It wouldn't be a 'whim,' Mrs. Hartwell, and I should be _glad_ to give
up,” she said with decision.

Mrs. Hartwell laughed again, her amused eyes on Marie's face.

“Dear me, child! don't you know that if men had their way, they'd--well,
if men married men there'd never be such a thing in the world as a
shower bouquet or a piece of wedding cake!”

There was no reply. A little precipitately Marie turned and hurried
away. A moment later she was laying a restraining hand on Billy, who was
filling tall vases with superb long-stemmed roses in the kitchen.

“Billy, please,” she panted, “couldn't we do without those? Couldn't we
send them to some--some hospital?--and the wedding cake, too, and--”

“The wedding cake--to some _hospital!_”

“No, of course not--to the hospital. It would make them sick to eat it,
wouldn't it?” That there was no shadow of a smile on Marie's face showed
how desperate, indeed, was her state of mind. “I only meant that I
didn't want them myself, nor the shower bouquet, nor the rooms darkened,
nor little Kate as the flower girl--and would you mind very much if I
asked you not to be my maid of honor?”

“_Marie!_”

Marie covered her face with her hands then and began to sob brokenly;
so there was nothing for Billy to do but to take her into her arms with
soothing little murmurs and pettings. By degrees, then, the whole story
came out.

Billy almost laughed--but she almost cried, too. Then she said:

“Dearie, I don't believe Cyril feels or acts half so bad as Bertram and
Kate make out, and, anyhow, if he did, it's too late now to--to send the
wedding cake to the hospital, or make any other of the little changes
you suggest.” Billy's lips puckered into a half-smile, but her eyes were
grave. “Besides, there are your music pupils trimming the living-room
this minute with evergreen, there's little Kate making her flower-girl
wreath, and Mrs. Hartwell stacking cake boxes in the hall, to say
nothing of Rosa gloating over the best china in the dining-room, and
Aunt Hannah putting purple bows into the new lace cap she's counting
on wearing. Only think how disappointed they'd all be if I should say:
'Never mind--stop that. Marie's just going to have a minister. No fuss,
no feathers!' Why, dearie, even the roses are hanging their heads for
grief,” she went on mistily, lifting with gentle fingers one of the
full-petalled pink beauties near her. “Besides, there's your--guests.”

“Oh, of course, I knew I couldn't--really,” sighed Marie, as she turned
to go up-stairs, all the light and joy gone from her face.

Billy, once assured that Marie was out of hearing, ran to the telephone.

Bertram answered.

“Bertram, tell Cyril I want to speak to him, please.”

“All right, dear, but go easy. Better strike up your tuning fork to find
his pitch to-day. You'll discover it's a high one, all right.”

A moment later Cyril's tersely nervous “Good morning, Billy,” came
across the line.

Billy drew in her breath and cast a hurriedly apprehensive glance over
her shoulder to make sure Marie was not near.

“Cyril,” she called in a low voice, “if you care a shred for Marie, for
heaven's sake call her up and tell her that you dote on pink roses, and
pink ribbons, and pink breakfasts--and pink wedding cake!”

“But I don't.”

“Oh, yes, you do--to-day! You would--if you could see Marie now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing, only she overheard part of Bertram's nonsensical talk with
Kate a little while ago, and she's ready to cast the last ravelling
of white satin and conventionality behind her, and go with you to the
justice of the peace.”

“Sensible girl!”

“Yes, but she can't, you know, with fifty guests coming to the wedding,
and twice as many more to the reception. Honestly, Cyril, she's
broken-hearted. You must do something. She's--coming!” And the receiver
clicked sharply into place.

Five minutes later Marie was called to the telephone. Dejectedly,
wistful-eyed, she went. Just what were the words that hummed across the
wire into the pink little ear of the bride-to-be, Billy never knew;
but a Marie that was anything but wistful-eyed and dejected left the
telephone a little later, and was heard very soon in the room above
trilling merry snatches of a little song. Contentedly, then, Billy went
back to her roses.

It was a pretty wedding, a very pretty wedding. Every one said that. The
pink and green of the decorations, the soft lights (Kate had had her way
about darkening the rooms), the pretty frocks and smiling faces of the
guests all helped. Then there were the dainty flower girl, little Kate,
the charming maid of honor, Billy, the stalwart, handsome best man,
Bertram, to say nothing of the delicately beautiful bride, who looked
like some fairy visitor from another world in the floating shimmer of
her gossamer silk and tulle. There was, too, not quite unnoticed, the
bridegroom; tall, of distinguished bearing, and with features that were
clear cut and-to-day-rather pale.

Then came the reception--the “women and confusion” of Cyril's
fears--followed by the going away of the bride and groom with its merry
warfare of confetti and old shoes.

At four o'clock, however, with only William and Bertram remaining for
guests, something like quiet descended at last on the little house.

“Well, it's over,” sighed Billy, dropping exhaustedly into a big chair
in the living-room.

“And _well_ over,” supplemented Aunt Hannah, covering her white shawl
with a warmer blue one.

“Yes, I think it was,” nodded Kate. “It was really a very pretty
wedding.”

“With your help, Kate--eh?” teased William.

“Well, I flatter myself I did do some good,” bridled Kate, as she turned
to help little Kate take the flower wreath from her head.

“Even if you did hurry into my room and scare me into conniption fits
telling me I'd be late,” laughed Billy.

Kate tossed her head.

“Well, how was I to know that Aunt Hannah's clock only meant half-past
eleven when it struck twelve?” she retorted.

Everybody laughed.

“Oh, well, it was a pretty wedding,” declared William, with a long sigh.

“It'll do--for an understudy,” said Bertram softly, for Billy's ears
alone.

Only the added color and the swift glance showed that Billy heard, for
when she spoke she said:

“And didn't Cyril behave beautifully? 'Most every time I looked at him
he was talking to some woman.”

“Oh, no, he wasn't--begging your pardon, my dear,” objected Bertram. “I
watched him, too, even more closely than you did, and it was always the
_woman_ who was talking to _Cyril!_”

Billy laughed.

“Well, anyhow,” she maintained, “he listened. He didn't run away.”

“As if a bridegroom could!” cried Kate.

“I'm going to,” avowed Bertram, his nose in the air.

“Pooh!” scoffed Kate. Then she added eagerly: “You must be married in
church, Billy, and in the evening.”

Bertram's nose came suddenly out of the air. His eyes met Kate's
squarely.

“Billy hasn't decided yet how _she_ does want to be married,” he said
with unnecessary emphasis.

Billy laughed and interposed a quick change of subject.

“I think people had a pretty good time, too, for a wedding, don't you?”
 she asked. “I was sorry Mary Jane couldn't be here--'twould have been
such a good chance for him to meet our friends.”

“As--_Mary Jane?_” asked Bertram, a little stiffly.

“Really, my dear,” murmured Aunt Hannah, “I think it _would_ be more
respectful to call him by his name.”

“By the way, what is his name?” questioned William.

“That's what we don't know,” laughed Billy.

“Well, you know the 'Arkwright,' don't you?” put in Bertram. Bertram,
too, laughed, but it was a little forcedly. “I suppose if you knew his
name was 'Methuselah,' you wouldn't call him that--yet, would you?”

Billy clapped her hands, and threw a merry glance at Aunt Hannah.

“There! we never thought of 'Methuselah,'” she gurgled gleefully. “Maybe
it _is_ 'Methuselah,' now--'Methuselah John'! You see, he's told us to
try to guess it,” she explained, turning to William; “but, honestly, I
don't believe, whatever it is, I'll ever think of him as anything but
'Mary Jane.'”

“Well, as far as I can judge, he has nobody but himself to thank for
that, so he can't do any complaining,” smiled William, as he rose to go.
“Well, how about it, Bertram? I suppose you're going to stay a while to
comfort the lonely--eh, boy?”

“Of course he is--and so are you, too, Uncle William,” spoke up Billy,
with affectionate cordiality. “As if I'd let you go back to a forlorn
dinner in that great house to-night! Indeed, no!”

William smiled, hesitated, and sat down.

“Well, of course--” he began.

“Yes, of course,” finished Billy, quickly. “I'll telephone Pete that
you'll stay here--both of you.”

It was at this point that little Kate, who had been turning interested
eyes from one brother to the other, interposed a clear, high-pitched
question.

“Uncle William, didn't you _want_ to marry my going-to-be-Aunt Billy?”

“Kate!” gasped her mother, “didn't I tell you--” Her voice trailed into
an incoherent murmur of remonstrance.

Billy blushed. Bertram said a low word under his breath. Aunt Hannah's
“Oh, my grief and conscience!” was almost a groan.

William laughed lightly.

“Well, my little lady,” he suggested, “let us put it the other way and
say that quite probably she didn't want to marry me.”

“Does she want to marry Uncle Bertram?” “Kate!” gasped Billy and Mrs.
Hartwell together this time, fearful of what might be coming next.

“We'll hope so,” nodded Uncle William, speaking in a cheerfully
matter-of-fact voice, intended to discourage curiosity.

The little girl frowned and pondered. Her elders cast about in their
minds for a speedy change of subject; but their somewhat scattered wits
were not quick enough. It was little Kate who spoke next.

“Uncle William, would she have got Uncle Cyril if Aunt Marie hadn't
nabbed him first?”

“Kate!” The word was a chorus of dismay this time.

Mrs. Hartwell struggled to her feet.

“Come, come, Kate, we must go up-stairs--to bed,” she stammered.

The little girl drew back indignantly.

“To bed? Why, mama, I haven't had my supper yet!”

“What? Oh, sure enough--the lights! I forgot. Well, then, come up--to
change your dress,” finished Mrs. Hartwell, as with a despairing look
and gesture she led her young daughter from the room.




CHAPTER XIV. M. J. MAKES ANOTHER MOVE


Billy came down-stairs on the thirteenth of December to find everywhere
the peculiar flatness that always follows a day which for weeks has been
the focus of one's aims and thoughts and labor.

“It's just as if everything had stopped at Marie's wedding, and there
wasn't anything more to do,” she complained to Aunt Hannah at the
breakfast table. “Everything seems so--queer!”

“It won't--long, dear,” smiled Aunt Hannah, tranquilly, as she buttered
her roll, “specially after Bertram comes back. How long does he stay in
New York?”

“Only three days; but I'm just sure it's going to seem three weeks,
now,” sighed Billy. “But he simply had to go--else he wouldn't have
gone.”

“I've no doubt of it,” observed Aunt Hannah. And at the meaning
emphasis of her words, Billy laughed a little. After a minute she said
aggrievedly:

“I had supposed that I could at least have a sort of 'after the ball'
celebration this morning picking up and straightening things around.
But John and Rosa have done it all. There isn't so much as a rose
leaf anywhere on the floor. Of course most of the flowers went to
the hospital last night, anyway. As for Marie's room--it looks as
spick-and-span as if it had never seen a scrap of ribbon or an inch of
tulle.”

“But--the wedding presents?”

“All carried down to the kitchen and half packed now, ready to go over
to the new home. John says he'll take them over in Peggy this afternoon,
after he takes Mrs. Hartwell's trunk to Uncle William's.”

“Well, you can at least go over to the apartment and work,” suggested
Aunt Hannah, hopefully.

“Humph! Can I?” scoffed Billy. “As if I could--when Marie left strict
orders that not one thing was to be touched till she got here. They
arranged everything but the presents before the wedding, anyway; and
Marie wants to fix those herself after she gets back. Mercy! Aunt
Hannah, if I should so much as move a plate one inch in the china
closet, Marie would know it--and change it when she got home,” laughed
Billy, as she rose from the table. “No, I can't go to work over there.”

“But there's your music, my dear. You said you were going to write some
new songs after the wedding.”

“I was,” sighed Billy, walking to the window, and looking listlessly
at the bare, brown world outside; “but I can't write songs--when there
aren't any songs in my head to write.”

“No, of course not; but they'll come, dear, in time. You're tired, now,”
 soothed Aunt Hannah, as she turned to leave the room.

“It's the reaction, of course,” murmured Aunt Hannah to herself, on the
way up-stairs. “She's had the whole thing on her hands--dear child!”

A few minutes later, from the living-room, came a plaintive little minor
melody. Billy was at the piano.

Kate and little Kate had, the night before, gone home with William.
It had been a sudden decision, brought about by the realization that
Bertram's trip to New York would leave William alone. Her trunk was to
be carried there to-day, and she would leave for home from there, at the
end of a two or three days' visit.

It began to snow at twelve o'clock. All the morning the sky had been
gray and threatening; and the threats took visible shape at noon in
myriads of white snow feathers that filled the air to the blinding
point, and turned the brown, bare world into a thing of fairylike
beauty. Billy, however, with a rare frown upon her face, looked out upon
it with disapproving eyes.

“I _was_ going in town--and I believe I'll go now,” she cried.

“Don't, dear, please don't,” begged Aunt Hannah. “See, the flakes are
smaller now, and the wind is coming up. We're in for a blizzard--I'm
sure we are. And you know you have some cold, already.”

“All right,” sighed Billy. “Then it's me for the knitting work and the
fire, I suppose,” she finished, with a whimsicality that did not hide
the wistful disappointment of her voice.

She was not knitting, however, she was sewing with Aunt Hannah when at
four o'clock Rosa brought in the card.

Billy glanced at the name, then sprang to her feet with a glad little
cry.

“It's Mary Jane!” she exclaimed, as Rosa disappeared. “Now wasn't he a
dear to think to come to-day? You'll be down, won't you?”

Aunt Hannah smiled even while she frowned.

“Oh, Billy!” she remonstrated. “Yes, I'll come down, of course, a little
later, and I'm glad _Mr. Arkwright_ came,” she said with reproving
emphasis.

Billy laughed and threw a mischievous glance over her shoulder.

“All right,” she nodded. “I'll go and tell _Mr. Arkwright_ you'll be
down directly.”

In the living-room Billy greeted her visitor with a frankly cordial
hand.

“How did you know, Mr. Arkwright, that I was feeling specially restless
and lonesome to-day?” she demanded.

A glad light sprang to the man's dark eyes.

“I didn't know it,” he rejoined. “I only knew that I was specially
restless and lonesome myself.”

Arkwright's voice was not quite steady. The unmistakable friendliness in
the girl's words and manner had sent a quick throb of joy to his heart.
Her evident delight in his coming had filled him with rapture. He could
not know that it was only the chill of the snowstorm that had given
warmth to her handclasp, the dreariness of the day that had made her
greeting so cordial, the loneliness of a maiden whose lover is away that
had made his presence so welcome.

“Well, I'm glad you came, anyway,” sighed Billy, contentedly; “though I
suppose I ought to be sorry that you were lonesome--but I'm afraid I'm
not, for now you'll know just how I felt, so you won't mind if I'm a
little wild and erratic. You see, the tension has snapped,” she added
laughingly, as she seated herself.

“Tension?”

“The wedding, you know. For so many weeks we've been seeing just
December twelfth, that we'd apparently forgotten all about the
thirteenth that came after it; so when I got up this morning I felt
just as you do when the clock has stopped ticking. But it was a lovely
wedding, Mr. Arkwright. I'm sorry you could not be here.”

“Thank you; so am I--though usually, I will confess, I'm not much
good at attending 'functions' and meeting strangers. As perhaps you've
guessed, Miss Neilson, I'm not particularly a society chap.”

“Of course you aren't! People who are doing things--real things--seldom
are. But we aren't the society kind ourselves, you know--not the capital
S kind. We like sociability, which is vastly different from liking
Society. Oh, we have friends, to be sure, who dote on 'pink teas
and purple pageants,' as Cyril calls them; and we even go ourselves
sometimes. But if you had been here yesterday, Mr. Arkwright, you'd have
met lots like yourself, men and women who are doing things: singing,
playing, painting, illustrating, writing. Why, we even had a poet,
sir--only he didn't have long hair, so he didn't look the part a bit,”
 she finished laughingly.

“Is long hair--necessary--for poets?” Arkwright's smile was quizzical.

“Dear me, no; not now. But it used to be, didn't it? And for painters,
too. But now they look just like--folks.”

Arkwright laughed.

“It isn't possible that you are sighing for the velvet coats and flowing
ties of the past, is it, Miss Neilson?”

“I'm afraid it is,” dimpled Billy. “I _love_ velvet coats and flowing
ties!”

“May singers wear them? I shall don them at once, anyhow, at a venture,”
 declared the man, promptly.

Billy smiled and shook her head.

“I don't think you will. You all like your horrid fuzzy tweeds and
worsteds too well!”

“You speak with feeling. One would almost suspect that you already had
tried to bring about a reform--and failed. Perhaps Mr. Cyril, now, or
Mr. Bertram--” Arkwright stopped with a whimsical smile.

Billy flushed a little. As it happened, she had, indeed, had a merry
tilt with Bertram on that very subject, and he had laughingly promised
that his wedding present to her would be a velvet house coat for
himself. It was on the point of Billy's tongue now to say this to
Arkwright; but another glance at the provoking smile on his lips drove
the words back in angry confusion. For the second time, in the presence
of this man, Billy found herself unable to refer to her engagement to
Bertram Henshaw--though this time she did not in the least doubt that
Arkwright already knew of it.

With a little gesture of playful scorn she rose and went to the piano.

“Come, let us try some duets,” she suggested. “That's lots nicer than
quarrelling over velvet coats; and Aunt Hannah will be down presently to
hear us sing.”

Before she had ceased speaking, Arkwright was at her side with an
exclamation of eager acquiescence.

It was after the second duet that Arkwright asked, a little diffidently.

“Have you written any new songs lately?”

“No.”

“You're going to?”

“Perhaps--if I find one to write.”

“You mean--you have no words?”

“Yes--and no. I have some words, both of my own and other people's; but
I haven't found in any one of them, yet--a melody.”

Arkwright hesitated. His right hand went almost to his inner coat
pocket--then fell back at his side. The next moment he picked up a sheet
of music.

“Are you too tired to try this?” he asked.

A puzzled frown appeared on Billy's face.

“Why, no, but--”

“Well, children, I've come down to hear the music,” announced Aunt
Hannah, smilingly, from the doorway; “only--Billy, _will_ you run up
and get my pink shawl, too? This room _is_ colder than I thought, and
there's only the white one down here.”

“Of course,” cried Billy, rising at once. “You shall have a dozen
shawls, if you like,” she laughed, as she left the room.

What a cozy time it was--the hour that followed, after Billy returned
with the pink shawl! Outside, the wind howled at the windows and flung
the snow against the glass in sleety crashes. Inside, the man and the
girl sang duets until they were tired; then, with Aunt Hannah, they
feasted royally on the buttered toast, tea, and frosted cakes that
Rosa served on a little table before the roaring fire. It was then that
Arkwright talked of himself, telling them something of his studies, and
of the life he was living.

“After all, you see there's just this difference between my friends
and yours,” he said, at last. “Your friends _are_ doing things. They've
succeeded. Mine haven't, yet--they're only _trying_.”

“But they will succeed,” cried Billy.

“Some of them,” amended the man.

“Not--all of them?” Billy looked a little troubled.

Arkwright shook his head slowly.

“No. They couldn't--all of them, you know. Some haven't the talent, some
haven't the perseverance, and some haven't the money.”

“But all that seems such a pity-when they've tried,” grieved Billy.

“It is a pity, Miss Neilson. Disappointed hopes are always a pity,
aren't they?”

“Y-yes,” sighed the girl. “But--if there were only something one could
do to--help!”

Arkwright's eyes grew deep with feeling, but his voice, when he spoke,
was purposely light.

“I'm afraid that would be quite too big a contract for even your
generosity, Miss Neilson--to mend all the broken hopes in the world,” he
prophesied.

“I have known great good to come from great disappointments,” remarked
Aunt Hannah, a bit didactically.

“So have I,” laughed Arkwright, still determined to drive the troubled
shadow from the face he was watching so intently. “For instance: a
fellow I know was feeling all cut up last Friday because he was just too
late to get into Symphony Hall on the twenty-five-cent admission. Half
an hour afterwards his disappointment was turned to joy--a friend who
had an orchestra chair couldn't use his ticket that day, and so handed
it over to him.”

Billy turned interestedly.

“What are those twenty-five-cent tickets to the Symphony?”

“Then--you don't know?”

“Not exactly. I've heard of them, in a vague fashion.”

“Then you've missed one of the sights of Boston if you haven't ever
seen that long line of patient waiters at the door of Symphony Hall of a
Friday morning.”

“Morning! But the concert isn't till afternoon!”

“No, but the waiting is,” retorted Arkwright. “You see, those admissions
are limited--five hundred and five, I believe--and they're rush seats,
at that. First come, first served; and if you're too late you aren't
served at all. So the first arrival comes bright and early. I've heard
that he has been known to come at peep of day when there's a Paderewski
or a Melba for a drawing card. But I've got my doubts of that. Anyhow,
I never saw them there much before half-past eight. But many's the cold,
stormy day I've seen those steps in front of the Hall packed for hours,
and a long line reaching away up the avenue.”

Billy's eyes widened.

“And they'll stand all that time and wait?”

“To be sure they will. You see, each pays twenty-five cents at the door,
until the limit is reached, then the rest are turned away. Naturally
they don't want to be turned away, so they try to get there early enough
to be among the fortunate five hundred and five. Besides, the earlier
you are, the better seat you are likely to get.”

“But only think of _standing_ all that time!”

“Oh, they bring camp chairs, sometimes, I've heard, and then there are
the steps. You don't know what a really fine seat a stone step is--if
you have a _big_ enough bundle of newspapers to cushion it with! They
bring their luncheons, too, with books, papers, and knitting work for
fine days, I've been told--some of them. All the comforts of home, you
see,” smiled Arkwright.

“Why, how--how dreadful!” stammered Billy.

“Oh, but they don't think it's dreadful at all,” corrected Arkwright,
quickly. “For twenty-five cents they can hear all that you hear down in
your orchestra chair, for which you've paid so high a premium.”

“But who--who are they? Where do they come from? Who _would_ go and
stand hours like that to get a twenty-five-cent seat?” questioned Billy.

“Who are they? Anybody, everybody, from anywhere? everywhere; people
who have the music hunger but not the money to satisfy it,” he rejoined.
“Students, teachers, a little milliner from South Boston, a little
dressmaker from Chelsea, a housewife from Cambridge, a stranger from the
uttermost parts of the earth; maybe a widow who used to sit down-stairs,
or a professor who has seen better days. Really to know that line,
you should see it for yourself, Miss Neilson,” smiled Arkwright, as
he reluctantly rose to go. “Some Friday, however, before you take your
seat, just glance up at that packed top balcony and judge by the
faces you see there whether their owners think they're getting their
twenty-five-cents' worth, or not.”

“I will,” nodded Billy, with a smile; but the smile came from her lips
only, not her eyes: Billy was wishing, at that moment, that she owned
the whole of Symphony Hall--to give away. But that was like Billy. When
she was seven years old she had proposed to her Aunt Ella that they take
all the thirty-five orphans from the Hampden Falls Orphan Asylum to live
with them, so that little Sallie Cook and the other orphans might have
ice cream every day, if they wanted it. Since then Billy had always been
trying--in a way--to give ice cream to some one who wanted it.

Arkwright was almost at the door when he turned abruptly. His face was
an abashed red. From his pocket he had taken a small folded paper.

“Do you suppose--in this--you might find--that melody?” he stammered in
a low voice. The next moment he was gone, having left in Billy's fingers
a paper upon which was written in a clear-cut, masculine hand six
four-line stanzas.

Billy read them at once, hurriedly, then more carefully.

“Why, they're beautiful,” she breathed, “just beautiful! Where did he
get them, I wonder? It's a love song--and such a pretty one! I believe
there _is_ a melody in it,” she exulted, pausing to hum a line or
two. “There is--I know there is; and I'll write it--for Bertram,” she
finished, crossing joyously to the piano.

Half-way down Corey Hill at that moment, Arkwright was buffeting
the wind and snow. He, too, was thinking joyously of those
stanzas--joyously, yet at the same time fearfully. Arkwright himself had
written those lines--though not for Bertram.




CHAPTER XV. “MR. BILLY” AND “MISS MARY JANE”


On the fourteenth of December Billy came down-stairs alert, interested,
and happy. She had received a dear letter from Bertram (mailed on the
way to New York), the sun was shining, and her fingers were fairly
tingling to put on paper the little melody that was now surging
riotously through her brain. Emphatically, the restlessness of the day
before was gone now. Once more Billy's “clock” had “begun to tick.”

After breakfast Billy went straight to the telephone and called up
Arkwright. Even one side of the conversation Aunt Hannah did not hear
very clearly; but in five minutes a radiant-faced Billy danced into the
room.

“Aunt Hannah, just listen! Only think--Mary Jane wrote the words
himself, so of course I can use them!”

“Billy, dear, _can't_ you say 'Mr. Arkwright'?” pleaded Aunt Hannah.

Billy laughed and gave the anxious-eyed little old lady an impulsive
hug.

“Of course! I'll say 'His Majesty' if you like, dear,” she chuckled.
“But did you hear--did you realize? They're his own words, so there's no
question of rights or permission, or anything. And he's coming up this
afternoon to hear my melody, and to make a few little changes in the
words, maybe. Oh, Aunt Hannah, you don't know how good it seems to get
into my music again!”

“Yes, yes, dear, of course; but--” Aunt Hannah's sentence ended in a
vaguely troubled pause.

Billy turned in surprise.

“Why, Aunt Hannah, aren't you glad? You _said_ you'd be glad!”

“Yes, dear; and I am--very glad. It's only--if it doesn't take too much
time--and if Bertram doesn't mind.”

Billy flushed. She laughed a little bitterly.

“No, it won't take too much time, I fancy, and--so far as Bertram is
concerned--if what Sister Kate says is true, Aunt Hannah, he'll be glad
to have me occupy a little of my time with something besides himself.”

“Fiddlededee!” bristled Aunt Hannah.

“What did she mean by that?”

Billy smiled ruefully.

“Well, probably I did need it. She said it night before last just before
she went home with Uncle William. She declared that I seemed to forget
entirely that Bertram belonged to his Art first, before he belonged to
me; and that it was exactly as she had supposed it would be--a perfect
absurdity for Bertram to think of marrying anybody.”

“Fiddlededee!” ejaculated the irate Aunt Hannah, even more sharply. “I
hope you have too much good sense to mind what Kate says, Billy.”

“Yes, I know,” sighed the girl; “but of course I can see some things for
myself, and I suppose I did make--a little fuss about his going to New
York the other night. And I will own that I've had a real struggle with
myself sometimes, lately, not to mind--his giving so much time to
his portrait painting. And of course both of those are very
reprehensible--in an artist's wife,” she finished, a little tremulously.

“Humph! Well, I don't think I should worry about that,” observed Aunt
Hannah with grim positiveness.

“No, I don't mean to,” smiled Billy, wistfully. “I only told you so
you'd understand that it was just as well if I did have something to
take up my mind--besides Bertram. And of course music would be the most
natural thing.”

“Yes, of course,” agreed Aunt Hannah.

“And it seems actually almost providential that Mary--I mean Mr.
Arkwright is here to help me, now that Cyril is gone,” went on Billy,
still a little wistfully.

“Yes, of course. He isn't like--a stranger,” murmured Aunt Hannah. Aunt
Hannah's voice sounded as if she were trying to convince herself--of
something.

“No, indeed! He seems just like one of the family to me, almost as if he
were really--your niece, Mary Jane,” laughed Billy.

Aunt Hannah moved restlessly.

“Billy,” she hazarded, “he knows, of course, of your engagement?”

“Why, of course he does, Aunt Hannah everybody does!” Billy's eyes were
plainly surprised.

“Yes, yes, of course--he must,” subsided Aunt Hannah, confusedly, hoping
that Billy would not divine the hidden reason behind her question. She
was relieved when Billy's next words showed that she had not divined it.

“I told you, didn't I? He's coming up this afternoon. He can't get here
till five, though; but he's so interested! He's about as crazy over the
thing as I am. And it's going to be fine, Aunt Hannah, when it's done.
You just wait and see!” she finished gayly, as she tripped from the
room.

Left to herself, Aunt Hannah drew a long breath.

“I'm glad she didn't suspect,” she was thinking. “I believe she'd
consider even the _question_ disloyal to Bertram--dear child! And of
course Mary”--Aunt Hannah corrected herself with cheeks aflame--“I mean
Mr. Arkwright does--know.”

It was just here, however, that Aunt Hannah was mistaken. Mr. Arkwright
did not--know. He had not reached Boston when the engagement was
announced. He knew none of Billy's friends in town save the Henshaw
brothers. He had not heard from Calderwell since he came to Boston. The
very evident intimacy of Billy with the Henshaw brothers he accepted as
a matter of course, knowing the history of their acquaintance, and the
fact that Billy was Mr. William Henshaw's namesake. As to Bertram
being Billy's lover--that idea had long ago been killed at birth by
Calderwell's emphatic assertion that the artist would never care for any
girl--except to paint. Since coming to Boston, Arkwright had seen little
of the two together. His work, his friends, and his general mode of life
precluded that. Because of all this, therefore, Arkwright did not--know;
which was a pity--for Arkwright, and for some others.

Promptly at five o'clock that afternoon, Arkwright rang Billy's
doorbell, and was admitted by Rosa to the living-room, where Billy was
at the piano.

Billy sprang to her feet with a joyous word of greeting.

“I'm so glad you've come,” she sighed happily. “I want you to hear the
melody your pretty words have sung to me. Though, maybe, after all, you
won't like it, you know,” she finished with arch wistfulness.

“As if I could help liking it,” smiled the man, trying to keep from his
voice the ecstatic delight that the touch of her hand had brought him.

Billy shook her head and seated herself again at the piano.

“The words are lovely,” she declared, sorting out two or three sheets of
manuscript music from the quantity on the rack before her. “But there's
one place--the rhythm, you know--if you could change it. There!--but
listen. First I'm going to play it straight through to you.” And she
dropped her fingers to the keyboard. The next moment a tenderly sweet
melody--with only a chord now and then for accompaniment--filled
Arkwright's soul with rapture. Then Billy began to sing, very softly,
the words!

No wonder Arkwright's soul was filled with rapture. They were his words,
wrung straight from his heart; and they were being sung by the girl
for whom they were written. They were being sung with feeling, too--so
evident a feeling that the man's pulse quickened, and his eyes flashed a
sudden fire. Arkwright could not know, of course, that Billy, in her own
mind, was singing that song--to Bertram Henshaw.

The fire was still in Arkwright's eyes when the song was ended; but
Billy very plainly did not see it. With a frowning sigh and a murmured
“There!” she began to talk of “rhythm” and “accent” and “cadence”; and
to point out with anxious care why three syllables instead of two were
needed at the end of a certain line. From this she passed eagerly to
the accompaniment, and Arkwright at once found himself lost in a maze
of “minor thirds” and “diminished sevenths,” until he was forced to
turn from the singer to the song. Still, watching her a little later, he
noticed her absorbed face and eager enthusiasm, her earnest pursuance of
an elusive harmony, and he wondered: did she, or did she not sing that
song with feeling a little while before?

Arkwright had not settled this question to his own satisfaction when
Aunt Hannah came in at half-past five, and he was conscious of a vague
disappointment as he rose to greet her. Billy, however, turned an
untroubled face to the newcomer.

“We're doing finely, Aunt Hannah,” she cried. Then, suddenly, she flung
a laughing question to the man. “How about it, sir? Are we going to put
on the title-page: 'Words by Mary Jane Arkwright'--or will you unveil
the mystery for us now?”

“Have you guessed it?” he bantered.

“No--unless it's 'Methuselah John.' We did think of that the other day.”

“Wrong again!” he laughed.

“Then it'll have to be 'Mary Jane,'” retorted Billy, with calm
naughtiness, refusing to meet Aunt Hannah's beseechingly reproving eyes.
Then suddenly she chuckled. “It would be a combination, wouldn't it?
'Words by Mary Jane Arkwright. Music by Billy Neilson'! We'd have
sighing swains writing to 'Dear Miss Arkwright,' telling how touching
were _her_ words; and lovelorn damsels thanking _Mr_. Neilson for _his_
soul-inspiring music!”

“Billy, my dear!” remonstrated Aunt Hannah, faintly.

“Yes, yes, I know; that was bad--and I won't again, truly,” promised
Billy. But her eyes danced, and the next moment she had whirled about on
the piano stool and dashed into a Chopin waltz. The room itself, then,
seemed to be full of the twinkling feet of elves.




CHAPTER XVI. A GIRL AND A BIT OF LOWESTOFT


Immediately after breakfast the next morning, Billy was summoned to the
telephone.

“Oh, good morning, Uncle William,” she called, in answer to the
masculine voice that replied to her “Hullo.”

“Billy, are you very busy this morning?”

“No, indeed--not if you want me.”

“Well, I do, my dear.” Uncle William's voice was troubled. “I want you
to go with me, if you can, to see a Mrs. Greggory. She's got a teapot I
want. It's a genuine Lowestoft, Harlow says. Will you go?”

“Of course I will! What time?”

“Eleven if you can, at Park Street. She's at the West End. I don't dare
to put it off for fear I'll lose it. Harlow says others will have to
know of it, of course. You see, she's just made up her mind to sell it,
and asked him to find a customer. I wouldn't trouble you, but he says
they're peculiar--the daughter, especially--and may need some careful
handling. That's why I wanted you--though I wanted you to see the
tea-pot, too,--it'll be yours some day, you know.”

Billy, all alone at her end of the line, blushed. That she was one day
to be mistress of the Strata and all it contained was still anything but
“common” to her.

“I'd love to see it, and I'll come gladly; but I'm afraid I won't be
much help, Uncle William,” she worried.

“I'll take the risk of that. You see, Harlow says that about half the
time she isn't sure she wants to sell it, after all.”

“Why, how funny! Well, I'll come. At eleven, you say, at Park Street?”

“Yes; and thank you, my dear. I tried to get Kate to go, too; but she
wouldn't. By the way, I'm going to bring you home to luncheon. Kate
leaves this afternoon, you know, and it's been so snowy she hasn't
thought best to try to get over to the house. Maybe Aunt Hannah would
come, too, for luncheon. Would she?”

“I'm afraid not,” returned Billy, with a rueful laugh. “She's got
_three_ shawls on this morning, and you know that always means that
she's felt a draft somewhere--poor dear. I'll tell her, though, and I'll
see you at eleven,” finished Billy, as she hung up the receiver.

Promptly at the appointed time Billy met Uncle William at Park Street,
and together they set out for the West End street named on the paper in
his pocket. But when the shabby house on the narrow little street was
reached, the man looked about him with a troubled frown.

“I declare, Billy, I'm not sure but we'd better turn back,” he fretted.
“I didn't mean to take you to such a place as this.”

Billy shivered a little; but after one glance at the man's disappointed
face she lifted a determined chin.

“Nonsense, Uncle William! Of course you won't turn back. I don't
mind--for myself; but only think of the people whose _homes_ are here,”
 she finished, just above her breath.

Mrs. Greggory was found to be living in two back rooms at the top of
four flights of stairs, up which William Henshaw toiled with increasing
weariness and dismay, punctuating each flight with a despairing: “Billy,
really, I think we should turn back!”

But Billy would not turn back, and at last they found themselves in the
presence of a white-haired, sweet-faced woman who said yes, she was
Mrs. Greggory; yes, she was. Even as she uttered the words, however,
she looked fearfully over her shoulders as if expecting to hear from the
hall behind them a voice denying her assertion.

Mrs. Greggory was a cripple. Her slender little body was poised on two
once-costly crutches. Both the worn places on the crutches, and the
skill with which the little woman swung herself about the room testified
that the crippled condition was not a new one.

Billy's eyes were brimming with pity and dismay. Mechanically she had
taken the chair toward which Mrs. Greggory had motioned her. She had
tried not to seem to look about her; but there was not one detail of
the bare little room, from its faded rug to the patched but spotless
tablecloth, that was not stamped on her brain.

Mrs. Greggory had seated herself now, and William Henshaw had cleared
his throat nervously. Billy did not know whether she herself were the
more distressed or the more relieved to hear him stammer:

“We--er--I came from Harlow, Mrs. Greggory. He gave me to understand
you had an--er--teapot that--er--” With his eyes on the cracked white
crockery pitcher on the table, William Henshaw came to a helpless pause.

A curious expression, or rather, series of expressions crossed Mrs.
Greggory's face. Terror, joy, dismay, and relief seemed, one after the
other to fight for supremacy. Relief in the end conquered, though even
yet there was a second hurriedly apprehensive glance toward the door
before she spoke.

“The Lowestoft! Yes, I'm so glad!--that is, of course I must be glad.
I'll get it.” Her voice broke as she pulled herself from her chair.
There was only despairing sorrow on her face now.

The man rose at once.

“But, madam, perhaps--don't let me--” I he began stammeringly. “Of
course--Billy!” he broke off in an entirely different voice. “Jove! What
a beauty!”

Mrs. Greggory had thrown open the door of a small cupboard near the
collector's chair, disclosing on one of the shelves a beautifully shaped
teapot, creamy in tint, and exquisitely decorated in a rose design. Near
it set a tray-like plate of the same ware and decoration.

“If you'll lift it down, please, yourself,” motioned Mrs. Greggory. “I
don't like to--with these,” she explained, tapping the crutches at her
side.

With fingers that were almost reverent in their appreciation, the
collector reached for the teapot. His eyes sparkled.

“Billy, look, what a beauty! And it's a Lowestoft, too, the real
thing--the genuine, true soft past

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