To all appearances it came about very naturally that Billy did not return to America for some time. During the summer she wrote occasionally to William, and gave glowing accounts of their travels. Then in September came the letter telling him that they had concluded to stay through the winter in Paris. Billy wrote that she had decided not to go to college. She would take up some studies there in Paris, she said, but she would devote herself more particularly to her music.
When the next summer came there was still something other than America to claim her attention: the Calderwells had invited her to cruise with them for three months. Their yacht was a little floating palace of delight, Billy declared, not to mention the charm of the unknown lands and waters that she and Aunt Hannah would see.
Of all this Billy wrote to William—at occasional intervals—but she did not come home. Even when the next autumn came, there was still Paris to detain her for another long winter of study.
In the Henshaw house on Beacon Street, William mourned not a little as each recurring season brought no Billy.
“The idea! It's just as if one didn't have a namesake!” he fumed.
“Well, did you have one?” Bertram demanded one day. “Really, Will, I'm beginning to think she's a myth. Long years ago, from the first of April till June we did have two frolicsome sprites here that announced themselves as 'Billy' and 'Spunk,' I'll own. And a year later, by ways devious and secret, we three managed to see the one called 'Billy' off on a great steamship. Since then, what? A word—a message—a scrap of paper. Billy's a myth, I say!”
William sighed.
“Sometimes I don't know but you are right,” he admitted. “Why, it'll be three years next June since Billy was here. She must be nearly twenty-one—and we know almost nothing about her.”
“That's so. I wonder—” Bertram paused, and laughed a little, “I wonder if NOW she'd play guardian angel to me through the streets of Boston.”
William threw a keen glance into his brother's face.
“I don't believe it would be quite necessary, NOW, Bert,” he said quietly.
The other flushed a little, but his eyes softened.
“Maybe not, Will; still—one can always find some use for—a guardian angel, you know,” he finished, almost under his breath.
To Cyril Bertram had occasionally spoken, during the last two years, of their first suspicions concerning Billy's absence. They speculated vaguely, too, as to why she had gone, and if she would ever come back; and they wondered if anything could have wounded her and sent her away. To William they said nothing of all this, however; though they agreed that they would have asked Kate for her opinion, had she been there. But Kate was not there. As it chanced, a good business opportunity had called Kate's husband to a Western town very soon after Billy herself had gone to Hampden Falls; and since the family's removal to the West, Mrs. Hartwell had not once returned to Boston.
It was in April, three years since Billy's first appearance in the Beacon Street house, that Bertram met his friend, Hugh Calderwell, on the street one afternoon, and brought him home to dinner.
Hugh Calderwell was a youth who, Bertram said, had been born with a whole dozen silver spoons in his mouth. And, indeed, it would seem so, if present prosperity were any indication. He was a good-looking young fellow with a frank manliness that appealed to men, and a deferential chivalry that appealed to women; a combination that brought him many friends—and some enemies. With plenty of money to indulge a passion for traveling, young Calderwell had spent the most of his time since graduation in daring trips into the heart of almost impenetrable forests, or to the top of almost inaccessible mountains, with an occasional more ordinary trip to give variety. He had now come to the point, however, where he was determined to “settle down to something that meant something,” he told the Henshaws, as the four men smoked in Bertram's den after dinner.
“Yes, sir, I have,” he iterated. “And, by the way, the little girl that has set me to thinking in such good earnest is a friend of yours, too,—Miss Neilson. I met her in Paris. She was on our yacht all last summer.”
Three men sat suddenly erect in their chairs.
“Billy?” cried three voices. “Do you know Billy?”
“To be sure! And you do, too, she says.”
“Oh, no, we don't,” disputed Bertram, emphatically. “But we WISH we did!”
His guest laughed.
“Well, I fancy you DO know her, or you wouldn't have answered like that,” he retorted. “For you just begin to know Miss Billy when you find out that you DON'T know her. She is a charming girl—a very charming girl.”
“She is my namesake,” announced William, in what Bertram called his “finest ever” voice that he used only for the choicest bits in his collections.
“Yes, she told me,” smiled Calderwell. “'Billy' for 'William.' Odd idea, too, but clever. It helps to distinguish her even more—though she doesn't need it, for that matter.”
“'Doesn't need it,'” echoed William in a puzzled voice.
“No. Perhaps you don't know, Mr. Henshaw, but Miss Billy is a very popular young woman. You have reason to be proud of your namesake.”
“I have always been that,” declared William, with just a touch of hauteur.
“Tell us about her,” begged Bertram. “You remember I said that we wished we did know her.”
Calderwell smiled.
“I don't believe, after all, that you do know much about her,” he began musingly. “Billy is not one who talks much of herself, I fancy, in her letters.”
William frowned. This time there was more than a touch of hauteur in his voice.
“MISS NEILSON is not one to show vanity anywhere,” he said, with suggestive emphasis on the name.
“Indeed she isn't,” agreed Calderwell, heartily. “She is a fine girl—quite one of the finest I know, in fact.”
There was an uncomfortable silence. Over in the corner Cyril puffed at his cigar with an air almost of boredom. He had not spoken since his first surprised questioning with the others, “Do you know Billy?” William was still frowning. Even Bertram wore a look that was not quite satisfied.
“Miss Neilson has spent two winters in Paris now, you know,” resumed Calderwell, after a moment; “and she is very popular both with the American colony, and with the other students. As for her 'Aunt Hannah'—they all make a pet of her; but that is, perhaps, because Billy herself is so devoted.”
Again William frowned at the familiar “Billy”; but Calderwell talked on unheeding.
“After all, I'm not sure but some of us regard 'Aunt Hannah' with scant favor, occasionally,” he laughed; “something as if she were the dragon that guarded the princess, you know. Miss Billy IS popular with the men, and she has suitors enough to turn any girl's head—but her own.”
“Suitors!” cried William, plainly aghast. “Why, Billy's nothing but a child!”
Calderwell gave an odd smile.
“How long is it since you've seen—Miss Neilson?” he asked.
“Two years.”
“And then only for a few minutes just before she sailed,” amended Bertram. “We haven't really seen much of her since three years ago.”
“Hm-m; well, you'll see for yourself soon. You know she's coming home next month.”
Not one of the brothers did know it—but not one of them intended that Calderwell should find out that they did not.
“Yes, she's coming home,” said William, lifting his chin a little.
“Oh, yes, next month,” added Bertram, nonchalantly.
Even Cyril across the room was not to be outdone.
“Yes. Miss Neilson comes home next month,” he said.
Very early in May came the cheery letter from Billy herself announcing the news of her intended return.
“And I shall be so glad to see you all,” she wrote in closing. “It seems so long since I left America.” Then she signed her name with “kindest regards to all”—Billy did not send “love to all” any more.
William at once began to make plans for his namesake's comfort.
“But, Will, she didn't say she was coming here,” Bertram reminded him.
“She didn't need to,” smiled William, confidently. “She just took it for granted, of course. This is her home.”
“But it hasn't been—for years. She's called Hampden Falls 'home.'”
“I know, but that was before,” demurred William, his eyes a little anxious. “Besides, they've sold the house now, you know. There's nowhere for her to go but here, Bertram.”
“All right,” acquiesced the younger man, still doubtingly. “Maybe that's so; maybe! But—” he did not finish his sentence, and his eyes were troubled as he watched his brother begin to rearrange Billy's rooms. In time, however, so sure was William of Billy's return to the Beacon Street house, that Bertram ceased to question; and, with almost as much confidence as William himself displayed, he devoted his energies to the preparations for Billy's arrival.
And what preparations they were! Even Cyril helped this time to the extent of placing on Billy's piano a copy of his latest book, and a pile of new music. Nor were the melodies that floated down from the upper floor akin to funeral marches; they were perilously near to being allied to “ragtime.”
At last everything was ready. There was not one more bit of dust to catch Pete's eye, nor one more adornment that demanded William's careful hand to adjust. In Billy's rooms new curtains graced the windows and new rugs the floors. In Mrs. Stetson's, too, similar changes had been made. The latest and best “Face of a Girl” smiled at one from above Billy's piano, and the very rarest of William's treasures adorned the mantelpiece. No guns nor knives nor fishing-rods met the eyes now. Instead, at every turn, there was a hint of feminine tastes: a mirror, a workbasket, a low sewing-chair, a stand with a tea tray. And everywhere were roses, up-stairs and down-stairs, until the air was heavy with their perfume. In the dining-room Pete was again “swinging back and forth like a pendulum,” it is true; but it was a cheerful pendulum to-day, anxious only that no time should be lost. In the kitchen alone was there unhappiness, and there because Dong Ling had already spoiled a whole cake of chocolate in a vain attempt to make Billy's favorite fudge. Even Spunkie, grown now to be sleek, lazy, and majestically indifferent, was in holiday attire, for a brand-new pink bow of huge dimensions adorned his fat neck—for the first time in many months.
“You see,” William had explained to Bertram, “I put on that ribbon again because I thought it would make Spunkie seem more homelike, and more like Spunk. You know there wasn't anything Billy missed so much as that kitten when she went abroad. Aunt Hannah said so.”
“Yes, I know,” Bertram had laughed; “but still, Spunkie isn't Spunk, you understand!” he had finished, with a vision in his eyes of Billy as she had looked that first night when she had triumphantly lifted from the green basket the little gray kitten with its enormous pink bow. This time there was no circuitous journeying, no secrecy in the trip to New York. Quite as a matter of course the three brother made their plans to meet Billy, and quite as a matter of course they met her. Perhaps the only cloud in the horizon of their happiness was the presence of Calderwell. He, too, had come to meet Billy—and all the Henshaw brothers were vaguely conscious of a growing feeling of dislike toward Calderwell.
Billy was unmistakably glad to see them—and to see Calderwell. It was while she was talking to Calderwell, indeed, that William and Cyril and Bertram had an opportunity really to see the girl, and to note what time had done for her. They knew then, at once, that time had been very kind.
It was a slim Billy that they saw, with a head royally poised, and a chin that was round and soft, and yet knew well its own mind. The eyes were still appealing, in a way, yet behind the appeal lay unsounded depths of—not one of the brothers could quite make up his mind just what, yet all the brothers determined to find out. The hair still curled distractingly behind the pretty ears, and fluffed into burnished bronze where the wind had loosened it. The cheeks were paler now, though the rose-flush still glowed warmly through the clear, smooth skin. The mouth—Billy's mouth had always been fascinating, Bertram suddenly decided, as he watched it now. He wanted to paint it—again. It was not too large for beauty nor too small for strength. It curved delightfully, and the lower lip had just the fullness and the color that he liked—to paint, he said to himself.
William, too, was watching Billy's mouth; in fact—though he did not know it—one never was long near Billy without noticing her mouth, if she talked. William thought it pretty, merry, and charmingly kissable; but just now he wished that it would talk to him, and not to Calderwell any longer. Cyril—indeed, Cyril was paying little attention to Billy. He had turned to Aunt Hannah. To tell the truth, it seemed to Cyril that, after all, Billy was very much like other merry, thoughtless, rather noisy young women, of whom he knew—and disliked—scores. It had occurred to him suddenly that perhaps it would not be unalloyed bliss to take this young namesake of William's home with them.
It was not until an hour later, when Billy, Aunt Hannah, and the Henshaws had reached the hotel where they were to spend the night, that the Henshaw brothers began really to get acquainted with Billy. She seemed then more like their own Billy—the Billy that they had known.
“And I'm so glad to be here,” she cried; “and to see you all. America IS the best place, after all!”
“And of America, Boston is the Hub, you know,” Bertram reminded her.
“It is,” nodded Billy.
“And it hasn't changed a mite, except to grow better. You'll see to-morrow.”
“As if I hadn't been counting the days!” she exulted. “And now what have you been doing—all of you?”
“Just wait till you see,” laughed Bertram. “They're all spread out for your inspection.”
“A new 'Face of a Girl'?”
“Of course—yards of them!”
“And heaps of 'Old Blues' and 'black basalts'?” she questioned, turning to William.
“Well, a—few,” hesitated William, modestly.
“And—the music; what of that?” Billy looked now at Cyril.
“You'll see,” he shrugged. “There's very little, after all—of anything.”
Billy gave a wise shake of her head.
“I know better; and I want to see it all so much. We've talked and talked of it; haven't we, Aunt Hannah?—of what we would do when we got to Boston?”
“Yes, my dear; YOU have.”
The girl laughed.
“I accept the amendment,” she retorted with mock submission. “I suppose it is always I who talk.”
“It was—when I painted you,” teased Bertram. “By the way, I'll LET you talk if you'll pose again for me,” he finished eagerly.
Billy uptilted her nose.
“Do you think, sir, you deserve it, after that speech?” she demanded.
“But how about YOUR art—your music?” entreated William. “You have said so little of that in your letters.”
Billy hesitated. For a brief moment she glanced at Cyril. He did not appear to have heard his brother's question. He was talking with Aunt Hannah.
“Oh, I play—some,” murmured the girl, almost evasively. “But tell me of yourself, Uncle William, and of what you are doing.” And William needed no second bidding.
It was some time later that Billy turned to him with an amazed exclamation in response to something he had said.
“Home with you! Why, Uncle William, what do you mean? You didn't really think you'd got to be troubled with ME any longer!” she cried merrily.
William's face paled, then flushed.
“I did not call it 'trouble,' Billy,” he said quietly. His grieved eyes looked straight into hers and drove the merriment quite away.
“Oh, I'm so sorry,” she said gently. “And I appreciate your kindness, indeed I do; but I couldn't—really I couldn't think of such a thing!”
“And you don't have to think of it,” cut in Bertram, who considered that the situation was becoming much too serious. “All you have to do is to come.”
Billy shook her head.
“You are so good, all of you! But you didn't—you really didn't think I WAS—coming!” she protested.
“Indeed we did,” asserted Bertram, promptly; “and we have done everything to get ready for you, too, even to rigging up Spunkie to masquerade as Spunk. I'll warrant that Pete's nose is already flattened against the window-pane, lest we should HAPPEN to come to-night; and there's no telling how many cakes of chocolate Dong Ling has spoiled by this time. We left him trying to make fudge, you know.”
Billy laughed—but she cried, too; at least, her eyes grew suddenly moist. Bertram tried to decide afterward whether she laughed till she cried, or cried till she laughed.
“No, no,” she demurred tremulously. “I couldn't. I really have never intended that.”
“But why not? What are you going to do?” questioned William in a voice that was dazed and hurt.
The first question Billy ignored. The second she answered with a promptness and a gayety that was meant to turn the thoughts away from the first.
“We are going to Boston, Aunt Hannah and I. We've got rooms engaged for just now, but later we're going to take a house and live together. That's what we're going to do.”
In the Beacon Street house William mournfully removed the huge pink bow from Spunkie's neck, and Bertram threw away the roses. Cyril marched up-stairs with his pile of new music and his book; and Pete, in obedience to orders, hid the workbasket, the tea table, and the low sewing-chair. With a great display of a “getting back home” air, Bertram moved many of his belongings upstairs—but inside of a week he had moved them down again, saying that, after all, he believed he liked the first floor better. Billy's rooms were closed then, and remained as they had for years—silent and deserted.
Billy with Aunt Hannah had gone directly to their Back Bay hotel. “This is for just while I'm house-hunting,” the girl had said. But very soon she had decided to go to Hampden Falls for the summer and postpone her house-buying until the autumn. Billy was twenty-one now, and there were many matters of business to arrange with Lawyer Harding, concerning her inheritance. It was not until September, therefore, when Billy once more returned to Boston, that the Henshaw brothers had the opportunity of renewing their acquaintance with William's namesake.
“I want a home,” Billy said to Bertram and William on the night of her arrival. (As before, Mrs. Stetson and Billy had gone directly to a hotel.) “I want a real home with a furnace to shake—if I want to—and some dirt to dig in.”
“Well, I'm sure that ought to be easy to find,” smiled Bertram.
“Oh, but that isn't all,” supplemented Billy. “It must be mostly closets and piazza. At least, those are the important things.”
“Well, you might run across a snag there. Why don't you build?”
Billy gave a gesture of dissent.
“Too slow. I want it now.”
Bertram laughed. His eyes narrowed quizzically.
“From what Calderwell says,” he bantered, “I should judge that there are plenty of sighing swains who are only too ready to give you a home—and now.”
The pink deepened in Billy's cheeks.
“I said closets and a piazza, dirt to dig, and a furnace to shake,” she retorted merrily. “I didn't say I wanted a husband.”
“And you don't, of course,” interposed William, decidedly. “You are much too young for that.”
“Yes, sir,” agreed Billy demurely; but Bertram was sure he saw a twinkle under the downcast lashes.
“And where is Cyril?” asked Mrs. Stetson, coming into the room at that moment.
William stirred restlessly.
“Well, Cyril couldn't—couldn't come,” stammered William with an uneasy glance at his brother.
Billy laughed unexpectedly.
“It's too bad—about Mr. Cyril's not coming,” she murmured. And again Bertram caught the twinkle in the downcast eyes.
To Bertram the twinkle looked interesting, and worth pursuit; but at the very beginning of the chase Calderwell's card came up, and that ended—everything, so Bertram declared crossly to himself.
Billy found her dirt to dig in, and her furnace to shake, in Brookline. There were closets, too, and a generous expanse of veranda. They all belonged to a quaint little house perched on the side of Corey Hill. From the veranda in the rear, and from many of the windows, one looked out upon a delightful view of many-hued, many-shaped roofs nestling among towering trees, with the wide sweep of the sky above, and the haze of faraway hills at the horizon.
“In fact, it's as nearly perfect as it can be—and not take angel-wings and fly away,” declared Billy. “I have named it 'Hillside.'”
Very early in her career as house-owner, Billy decided that however delightful it might be to have a furnace to shake, it would not be at all delightful to shake it; besides, there was the new motor car to run. Billy therefore sought and found a good, strong man who had not only the muscle and the willingness to shake the furnace, but the skill to turn chauffeur at a moment's notice. Best of all, this man had also a wife who, with a maid to assist her, would take full charge of the house, and thus leave Billy and Mrs. Stetson free from care. All these, together with a canary, and a kitten as near like Spunk as could be obtained, made Billy's household.
“And now I'm ready to see my friends,” she announced.
“And I think your friends will be ready to see you,” Bertram assured her.
And they were—at least, so it appeared. For at once the little house perched on the hillside became the Mecca for many of the Henshaws' friends who had known Billy as William's merry, eighteen-year-old namesake. There were others, too, whom Billy had met abroad; and there were soft-stepping, sweet-faced old women and an occasional white-whiskered old man—Aunt Hannah's friends—who found that the young mistress of Hillside was a charming hostess. There were also the Henshaw “boys,” and there was always Calderwell—at least, so Bertram declared to himself sometimes.
Bertram came frequently to the little house on the hill, even more frequently than William; but Cyril was not seen there so often. He came once at first, it is true, and followed Billy from room to room as she proudly displayed her new home. He showed polite interest in her view, and a perfunctory enjoyment of the tea she prepared for him. But he did not come again for some time, and when he did come, he sat stiffly silent, while his brothers did most of the talking.
As to Calderwell—Calderwell seemed suddenly to have lost his interest in impenetrable forests and unclimbable mountains. Nothing more intricate than the long Beacon Street boulevard, or more inaccessible than Corey Hill seemed worth exploring, apparently. According to Calderwell's own version of it, he had “settled down”; he was going to “be something that was something.” And he did spend sundry of his morning hours in a Boston law office with ponderous, calf-bound volumes spread in imposing array on the desk before him. Other hours—many hours—he spent with Billy.
One day, very soon, in fact, after she arrived in Boston, Billy asked Calderwell about the Henshaws.
“Tell me about them,” she said. “Tell me what they have been doing all these years.”
“Tell you about them! Why, don't you know?”
She shook her head.
“No. Cyril says nothing. William little more—about themselves; and you know what Bertram is. One can hardly separate sense from nonsense with him.”
“You don't know, then, how splendidly Bertram has done with his art?”
“No; only from the most casual hearsay. Has he done well then?”
“Finely! The public has been his for years, and now the critics are tumbling over each other to do him honor. They rave about his 'sensitive, brilliant, nervous touch,'—whatever that may be; his 'marvelous color sense'; his 'beauty of line and pose.' And they quarrel over whether it's realism or idealism that constitutes his charm.”
“I'm so glad! And is it still the 'Face of a Girl'?”
“Yes; only he's doing straight portraiture now as well. It's got to be quite the thing to be 'done' by Henshaw; and there's many a fair lady that has graciously commissioned him to paint her portrait. He's a fine fellow, too—a mighty fine fellow. You may not know, perhaps, but three or four years ago he was—well, not wild, but 'frolicsome,' he would probably have called it. He got in with a lot of fellows that—well, that weren't good for a chap of Bertram's temperament.”
“Like—Mr. Seaver?”
Calderwell turned sharply.
“Did YOU know Seaver?” he demanded in obvious surprise.
“I used to SEE him—with Bertram.”
“Oh! Well, he WAS one of them, unfortunately. But Bertram shipped him years ago.”
Billy gave a sudden radiant smile—but she changed the subject at once.
“And Mr. William still collects, I suppose,” she observed.
“Jove! I should say he did! I've forgotten the latest; but he's a fine fellow, too, like Bertram.”
“And—Mr. Cyril?”
Calderwell frowned.
“That chap's a poser for me, Billy, and no mistake. I can't make him out!”
“What's the matter?”
“I don't know. Probably I'm not 'tuned to his pitch.' Bertram told me once that Cyril was very sensitively strung, and never responded until a certain note was struck. Well, I haven't ever found that note, I reckon.”
Billy laughed.
“I never heard Bertram say that, but I think I know what he means; and he's right, too. I begin to realize now what a jangling discord I must have created when I tried to harmonize with him three years ago! But what is he doing in his music?”
The other shrugged his shoulders.
“Same thing. Plays occasionally, and plays well, too; but he's so erratic it's difficult to get him to do it. Everything must be just so, you know—air, light, piano, and audience. He's got another book out, I'm told—a profound treatise on somebody's something or other—musical, of course.”
“And he used to write music; doesn't he do that any more?”
“I believe so. I hear of it occasionally through musical friends of mine. They even play it to me sometimes. But I can't stand for much of it—his stuff—really, Billy.”
“'Stuff' indeed! And why not?” An odd hostility showed in Billy's eyes.
Again Calderwell shrugged his shoulders.
“Don't ask me. I don't know. But they're always dead slow, somber things, with the wail of a lost spirit shrieking through them.”
“But I just love lost spirits that wail,” avowed Billy, with more than a shade of reproach in her voice.
Calderwell stared; then he shook his head.
“Not in mine, thank you;” he retorted whimsically. “I prefer my spirits of a more sane and cheerful sort.”
The girl laughed, but almost instantly she fell silent.
“I've been wondering,” she began musingly, after a time, “why some one of those three men does not—marry.”
“You wouldn't wonder—if you knew them better,” declared Calderwell. “Now think. Let's begin at the top of the Strata—by the way, Bertram's name for that establishment is mighty clever! First, Cyril: according to Bertram Cyril hates 'all kinds of women and other confusion'; and I fancy Bertram hits it about right. So that settles Cyril. Then there's William—you know William. Any girl would say William was a dear; but William isn't a MARRYING man. Dad says,”—Calderwell's voice softened a little—“dad says that William and his young wife were the most devoted couple that he ever saw; and that when she died she seemed to take with her the whole of William's heart—that is, what hadn't gone with the baby a few years before. There was a boy, you know, that died.”
“Yes, I know,” nodded Billy, quick tears in her eyes. “Aunt Hannah told me.”
“Well, that counts out William, then,” said Calderwell, with an air of finality.
“But how about Bertram? You haven't settled Bertram,” laughed Billy, archly.
“Bertram!” Calderwell's eyes widened. “Billy, can you imagine Bertram's making love in real earnest to a girl?”
“Why, I—don't—know; maybe!” Billy tipped her head from side to side as if she were viewing a picture set up for her inspection.
“Well, I can't. In the first place, no girl would think he was serious; or if by any chance she did, she'd soon discover that it was the turn of her head or the tilt of her chin that he admired—TO PAINT. Now isn't that so?”
Billy laughed, but she did not answer.
“It is, and you know it,” declared Calderwell. “And that settles him. Now you can see, perhaps, why none of these men—will marry.”
It was a long minute before Billy spoke.
“Not a bit of it. I don't see it at all,” she declared with roguish merriment. “Moreover, I think that some day, some one of them—will marry, Sir Doubtful!”
Calderwell threw a quick glance into her eyes. Evidently something he saw there sent a swift shadow to his own. He waited a moment, then asked abruptly:
“Billy, WON'T you marry me?”
Billy frowned, though her eyes still laughed.
“Hugh, I told you not to ask me that again,” she demurred.
“And I told you not to ask impossibilities of me,” he retorted imperturbably. “Billy, won't you, now—seriously?”
“Seriously, no, Hugh. Please don't let us go all over that again when we've done it so many times.”
“No, let's don't,” agreed the man, cheerfully. “And we don't have to, either, if you'll only say 'yes,' now right away, without any more fuss.”
Billy sighed impatiently.
“Hugh, won't you understand that I'm serious?” she cried; then she turned suddenly, with a peculiar flash in her eyes.
“Hugh, I don't believe Bertram himself could make love any more nonsensically than you can!”
Calderwell laughed, but he frowned, too; and again he threw into Billy's face that keenly questioning glance. He said something—a light something—that brought the laugh to Billy's lips in spite of herself; but he was still frowning when he left the house some minutes later, and the shadow was not gone from his eyes.
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