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.
Billy's time was well occupied. There were so many, many things she wished to do, and so few, few hours in which to do them. First there was her music. She made arrangements at once to study with one of Boston's best piano teachers, and she also made plans to continue her French and German. She joined a musical club, a literary club, and a more strictly social club; and to numerous church charities and philanthropic enterprises she lent more than her name, giving freely of both time and money.
Friday afternoons, of course, were to be held sacred to the Symphony concerts; and on certain Wednesday mornings there was to be a series of recitals, in which she was greatly interested.
For Society with a capital S, Billy cared little; but for sociability with a small s, she cared much; and very wide she opened her doors to her friends, lavishing upon them a wealth of hospitality. Nor did they all come in carriages or automobiles—these friends. A certain pale-faced little widow over at the South End knew just how good Miss Neilson's tea tasted on a crisp October afternoon and Marie Hawthorn, a frail young woman who gave music lessons, knew just how restful was Miss Neilson's couch after a weary day of long walks and fretful pupils.
“But how in the world do you discover them all—these forlorn specimens of humanity?” queried Bertram one evening, when he had found Billy entertaining a freckled-faced messenger-boy with a plate of ice cream and a big square of cake.
“Anywhere—everywhere,” smiled Billy.
“Well, this last candidate for your favor, who has just gone—who's he?”
“I don't know, beyond that his name is 'Tom,' and that he likes ice cream.”
“And you never saw him before?”
“Never.”
“Humph! One wouldn't think it, to see his charming air of nonchalant accustomedness.”
“Oh, but it doesn't take much to make a little fellow like that feel at home,” laughed Billy.
“And are you in the habit of feeding every one who comes to your house, on ice cream and chocolate cake? I thought that stone doorstep of yours was looking a little worn.”
“Not a bit of it,” retorted Billy. “This little chap came with a message just as I was finishing dinner. The ice cream was particularly good to-night, and it occurred to me that he might like a taste; so I gave it to him.”
Bertram raised his eyebrows quizzically.
“Very kind, of course; but—why ice cream?” he questioned. “I thought it was roast beef and boiled potatoes that was supposed to be handed out to gaunt-eyed hunger.”
“It is,” nodded Billy, “and that's why I think sometimes they'd like ice cream and chocolate frosting. Besides, to give sugar plums one doesn't have to unwind yards of red tape, or worry about 'pauperizing the poor.' To give red flannels and a ton of coal, one must be properly circumspect and consult records and city missionaries, of course; and that's why it's such a relief sometimes just to hand over a simple little sugar plum and see them smile.”
For a minute Bertram was silent, then he asked abruptly:
“Billy, why did you leave the Strata?”
Billy was taken quite by surprise. A pink flush spread to her forehead, and her tongue stumbled at first over her reply.
“Why, I—it seemed—you—why, I left to go to Hampden Falls, to be sure. Don't you remember?” she finished gaily.
“Oh, yes, I remember THAT,” conceded Bertram with disdainful emphasis. “But why did you go to Hampden Falls?”
“Why, it—it was the only place to go—that is, I WANTED to go there,” she corrected hastily. “Didn't Aunt Hannah tell you that I—I was homesick to get back there?”
“Oh, yes, Aunt Hannah SAID that,” observed the man; “but wasn't that homesickness a little—sudden?”
Billy blushed pink again.
“Why, maybe; but—well, homesickness is always more or less sudden; isn't it?” she parried.
Bertram laughed, but his eyes grew suddenly almost tender.
“See here, Billy, you can't bluff worth a cent,” he declared. “You are much too refreshingly frank for that. Something was the trouble. Now what was it? Won't you tell me, please?”
Billy pouted. She hesitated and gazed anywhere but into the challenging eyes before her. Then very suddenly she looked straight into them.
“Very well, there WAS a reason for my leaving,” she confessed a little breathlessly. “I—didn't want to—bother you any more—all of you.”
“Bother us!”
“No. I found out. You couldn't paint; Mr. Cyril couldn't play or write; and—and everything was different because I was there. But I didn't blame you—no, no!” she assured him hastily. “It was only that I—found out.”
“And may I ask HOW you obtained this most extraordinary information?” demanded Bertram, savagely.
Billy shook her head. Her round little chin looked suddenly square and determined.
“You may ask, but I shall not tell,” she declared firmly.
If Bertram had known Billy just a little better he would have let the matter drop there; but he did not know Billy, so he asked:
“Was it anything I did—or said?”
The girl did not answer.
“Billy, was it?” Bertram's voice showed terror now.
Billy laughed unexpectedly.
“Do you think I'm going to say 'no' to a series of questions, and then give the whole thing away by my silence when you come to the right one?” she demanded merrily. “No, sir!”
“Well, anyhow, it wasn't I, then,” sighed the man in relief; “for you just observed that you were not going to say 'no to a series of questions'—and that was the first one. So I've found out that much, anyhow,” he concluded triumphantly.
The girl eyed him for a moment in silence; then she shook her head.
“I'm not going to be caught that way, either,” she smiled. “You know—just what you did in the first place about it: nothing.”
The man stirred restlessly and pondered. After a long pause he adopted new tactics. With a searching study of her face to note the slightest change, he enumerated:
“Was it Cyril, then? Will? Aunt Hannah? Kate? It couldn't have been Pete, or Dong Ling!”
Billy still smiled inscrutably. At no name had Bertram detected so much as the flicker of an eyelid; and with a glance half-admiring, half-chagrined, he fell back into his chair.
“I'll give it up. You've won,” he acknowledged. “But, Billy,”—his manner changed suddenly—“I wonder if you know just what a hole you left in the Strata when you went away.”
“But I couldn't have—in the whole Strata,” objected Billy. “I occupied only one stratum, and a stratum doesn't go up and down, you know, only across; and mine was the second floor.”
Bertram gave a slow shake of his head.
“I know; but yours was a freak formation,” he maintained gravely. “It DID go up and down. Honestly, Billy, we did care—lots. Will and I were inconsolable, and even Cyril played dirges for a week.”
“Did he?” gurgled Billy, with sudden joyousness. “I'm so glad!”
“Thank you,” murmured Bertram, disapprovingly. “We hadn't considered it a subject for exultation.”
“What? Oh, I didn't mean that! That is—” she stopped helplessly.
“Oh, never mind about trying to explain,” interposed Bertram. “I fancy the remedy would be worse than the disease, in this case.”
“Nonsense! I only meant that I like to be missed—sometimes,” retorted Billy, a little nettled.
“And you rejoice then to have me mope, Cyril play dirges, and Will wander mournfully about the house with Spunkie in his arms! You should have seen William. If his forlornness did not bring tears to your eyes, the grace of the pink bow that lopped behind Spunkie's left ear would surely have brought a copious flow.”
Billy laughed, but her eyes grew tender.
“Did Uncle William do—that?” she asked.
“He did—and he did more. Pete told me after a time that you had not left one thing in the house, anywhere; but one day, over behind William's most treasured Lowestoft, I found a small shell hairpin, and a flat brown silk button that I recognized as coming from one of your dresses.”
“Oh!” said Billy, softly. “Dear Uncle William—and how good he was to me!”
Perhaps it was because Billy saw so little of Cyril that it was Cyril whom she wished particularly to see. William, Bertram, Calderwell—all her other friends came frequently to the little house on the hill, Billy told herself; only Cyril held aloof—and it was Cyril that she wanted.
Billy said that it was his music; that she wanted to hear him play, and that she wanted him to hear her. She felt grieved and chagrined. Not once since she had come had he seemed interested—really interested in her music. He had asked her, it is true, in a perfunctory way what she had done, and who her teachers had been. But all the while she was answering she had felt that he was not listening; that he did not care. And she cared so much! She knew now that all her practising through the long hard months of study, had been for Cyril. Every scale had been smoothed for his ears, and every phrase had been interpreted with his approbation in view. Across the wide waste of waters his face had shone like a star of promise, beckoning her on and on to heights unknown... And now she was here in Boston, but she could not even play the scale, nor interpret the phrase for the ear to which they had been so laboriously attuned; and Cyril's face, in the flesh, was no beckoning star of promise, but was a thing as cold and relentless as was the waste of waters across which it had shone in the past.
Billy did not understand it. She knew, it is true, of Cyril's reputed aversion to women in general and to noise; but she was neither women in general nor noise, she told herself indignantly. She was only the little maid, grown three years older, who had sat at his feet and adoringly listened to all that he had been pleased to say in the old days at the top of the Strata. And he had been kind then—very kind, Billy declared stoutly. He had been patient and interested, too, and he had seemed not only willing, but glad to teach her, while now—
Sometimes Billy thought she would ask him candidly what was the matter. But it was always the old, frank Billy that thought this; the impulsive Billy, that had gone up to Cyril's rooms years before and cheerfully announced that she had come to get acquainted. It was never the sensible, circumspect Billy that Aunt Hannah had for three years been shaping and coaxing into being. But even this Billy frowned rebelliously, and declared that sometime something should be said that would at least give him a chance to explain.
In all the weeks since Billy's purchase of Hillside, Cyril had been there only twice, and it was nearly Thanksgiving now. Billy had seen him once or twice, also, at the Beacon Street house, when she and Aunt Hannah had dined there; but on all these occasions he had been either the coldly reserved guest or the painfully punctilious host. Never had he been in the least approachable.
“He treats me exactly as he treated poor little Spunk that first night,” Billy declared hotly to herself.
Only once since she came had Billy heard Cyril play, and that was when she had shared the privilege with hundreds of others at a public concert. She had sat then entranced, with her eyes on the clean-cut handsome profile of the man who played with so sure a skill and power, yet without a note before him. Afterward she had met him face to face, and had tried to tell him how moved she was; but in her agitation, and because of a strange shyness that had suddenly come to her, she had ended only in stammering out some flippant banality that had brought to his face merely a bored smile of acknowledgment.
Twice she had asked him to play for her; but each time he had begged to be excused, courteously, but decidedly.
“It's no use to tease,” Bertram had interposed once, with an airy wave of his hands. “This lion always did refuse to roar to order. If you really must hear him, you'll have to slip up-stairs and camp outside his door, waiting patiently for such crumbs as may fall from his table.”
“Aren't your metaphors a little mixed?” questioned Cyril irritably.
“Yes, sir,” acknowledged Bertram with unruffled temper, “but I don't mind if Billy doesn't. I only meant her to understand that she'd have to do as she used to do—listen outside your door.”
Billy's cheeks reddened.
“But that is what I sha'n't do,” she retorted with spirit. “And, moreover, I still have hopes that some day he'll play to me.”
“Maybe,” conceded Bertram, doubtfully; “if the stool and the piano and the pedals and the weather and his fingers and your ears and my watch are all just right—then he'll play.”
“Nonsense!” scowled Cyril. “I'll play, of course, some day. But I'd rather not today.” And there the matter had ended. Since then Billy had not asked him to play.
Thanksgiving was to be a great day in the Henshaw family. The Henshaw brothers were to entertain. Billy and Aunt Hannah had been invited to dinner; and so joyously hospitable was William's invitation that it would have included the new kitten and the canary if Billy would have consented to bring them.
Once more Pete swept and garnished the house, and once more Dong Ling spoiled uncounted squares of chocolate trying to make the baffling fudge. Bertram said that the entire Strata was a-quiver. Not but that Billy and Aunt Hannah had visited there before, but that this was different. They were to come at noon this time. This visit was not to be a tantalizing little piece of stiffness an hour and a half long. It was to be a satisfying, whole-souled matter of half a day's comradeship, almost like old times. So once more the roses graced the rooms, and a flaring pink bow adorned Spunkie's fat neck; and once more Bertram placed his latest “Face of a Girl” in the best possible light. There was still a difference, however, for this time Cyril did not bring any music down to the piano, nor display anywhere a copy of his newest book.
The dinner was to be at three o'clock, but by special invitation the guests were to arrive at twelve; and promptly at the appointed hour they came.
“There, this is something like,” exulted Bertram, when the ladies, divested of their wraps, toasted their feet before the open fire in his den.
“Indeed it is, for now I've time to see everything—everything you've done since I've been gone,” cried Billy, gazing eagerly about her.
“Hm-m; well, THAT wasn't what I meant,” shrugged Bertram.
“Of course not; but it's what I meant,” retorted Billy. “And there are other things, too. I expect there are half a dozen new 'Old Blues' and black basalts that I want to see; eh, Uncle William?” she finished, smiling into the eyes of the man who had been gazing at her with doting pride for the last five minutes.
“Ho! Will isn't on teapots now,” quoth Bertram, before his brother had a chance to reply. “You might dangle the oldest 'Old Blue' that ever was before him now, and he'd pay scant attention if he happened at the same time to get his eyes on some old pewter chain with a green stone in it.”
Billy laughed; but at the look of genuine distress that came into William's face, she sobered at once.
“Don't you let him tease you, Uncle William,” she said quickly. “I'm sure pewter chains with green stones in them sound just awfully interesting, and I want to see them right away now. Come,” she finished, springing to her feet, “take me up-stairs, please, and show them to me.”
William shook his head and said, “No, no!” protesting that what he had were scarcely worth her attention; but even while he talked he rose to his feet and advanced half eagerly, half reluctantly, toward the door.
“Nonsense,” said Billy, fondly, as she laid her hand on his arm. “I know they are very much worth seeing. Come!” And she led the way from the room. “Oh, oh!” she exclaimed a few moments later, as she stood before a small cabinet in one of William's rooms. “Oh, oh, how pretty!”
“Do you like them? I thought you would,” triumphed William, quick joy driving away the anxious fear in his eyes. “You see, I—I thought of you when I got them—every one of them. I thought you'd like them. But I haven't very many, yet, of course. This is the latest one.” And he tenderly lifted from its black velvet mat a curious silver necklace made of small, flat, chain-linked disks, heavily chased, and set at regular intervals with a strange, blue-green stone.
Billy hung above it enraptured.
“Oh, what a beauty! And this, I suppose, is Bertram's 'pewter chain'! 'Pewter,' indeed!” she scoffed. “Tell me, Uncle William, where did you get it?”
And uncle William told, happily, thirstily, drinking in Billy's evident interest with delight. There were, too, a quaintly-set ring and a cat's-eye brooch; and to each belonged a story which William was equally glad to tell. There were other treasures, also: buckles, rings, brooches, and necklaces, some of dull gold, some of equally dull silver; but all of odd design and curious workmanship, studded here and there with bits of red, green, yellow, blue, and flame-colored stones. Very learnedly then from William's lips fell the new vocabulary that had come to him with his latest treasures: chrysoprase, carnelian, girasol, onyx, plasma, sardonyx, lapis lazuli, tourmaline, chrysolite, hyacinth, and carbuncle.
“They are lovely, perfectly lovely!” breathed Billy, when the last chain had slipped through her fingers into William's hand. “I think they are the very nicest things you ever collected.”
“So do I,” agreed the man, emphatically. “And they are—different, too.”
“They are,” said Billy, “very—different.” But she was not looking at the jewelry: her eyes were on a small shell hairpin and a brown silk button half hidden behind a Lowestoft teapot.
On the way down-stairs William stopped a moment at Billy's old rooms.
“I wish you were here now,” he said wistfully. “They're all ready for you—these rooms.”
“Oh, but why don't you use them?—such pretty rooms!” cried Billy, quickly.
William gave a gesture of dissent.
“We have no use for them; besides, they belong to you and Aunt Hannah. You left your imprint long ago, my dear—we should not feel at home in them.”
“Oh, but you should! You mustn't feel like that!” objected Billy, hurriedly crossing the room to the window to hide a sudden nervousness that had assailed her. “And here's my piano, too, and open!” she finished gaily, dropping herself upon the piano stool and dashing into a brilliant mazourka.
Billy, like Cyril, had a way of working off her moods at her finger tips; and to-day the tripping notes and crashing chords told of a nervous excitement that was not all joy. From the doorway William watched her flying fingers with fond pride, and it was very reluctantly that he acceded to Pete's request to go down-stairs for a moment to settle a vexed question concerning the table decorations.
Billy, left alone, still played, but with a difference. The tripping notes slowed into a weird melody that rose and fell and lost itself in the exquisite harmony that had been born of the crashing chords. Billy was improvising now, and into her music had crept something of her old-time longing when she had come to that house a lonely, orphan girl, in search of a home. On and on she played; then with a discordant note, she suddenly rose from the piano. She was thinking of Kate, and wondering if, had Kate not “managed” the little room would still be home.
So swiftly did Billy cross to the door that the man on the stairs outside had not time to get quite out of sight. Billy did not see his face, however; she saw only a pair of gray-trousered legs disappearing around the curve of the landing above. She thought nothing of it until later when dinner was announced, and Cyril came down-stairs; then she saw that he, and he only, that afternoon wore trousers of that particular shade of gray.
The dinner was a great success. Even the chocolate fudge in the little cut glass bonbon dishes was perfect; and it was a question whether Pete or Dong Ling tried the harder to please.
After dinner the family gathered in the drawing-room and chatted pleasantly. Bertram displayed his prettiest and newest pictures, and Billy played and sung—bright, tuneful little things that she knew Aunt Hannah and Uncle William liked. If Cyril was pleased or displeased, he did not show it—but Billy had ceased to play for Cyril's ears. She told herself that she did not care; but she did wonder: was that Cyril on the stairs, and if so—what was he doing there?
Two days after Thanksgiving Cyril called at Hillside.
“I've come to hear you play,” he announced abruptly.
Billy's heart sung within her—but her temper rose. Did he think then that he had but to beckon and she would come—and at this late day, she asked herself. Aloud she said:
“Play? But this is 'so sudden'! Besides, you have heard me.”
The man made a disdainful gesture.
“Not that. I mean play—really play. Billy, why haven't you played to me before?”
Billy's chin rose perceptibly.
“Why haven't you asked me?” she parried.
To Billy's surprise the man answered this with calm directness.
“Because Calderwell said that you were a dandy player, and I don't care for dandy players.”
Billy laughed now.
“And how do you know I'm not a dandy player, Sir Impertinent?” she demanded.
“Because I've heard you—when you weren't.”
“Thank you,” murmured Billy.
Cyril shrugged his shoulders.
“Oh, you know very well what I mean,” he defended. “I've heard you; that's all.”
“When?”
“That doesn't signify.”
Billy was silent for a moment, her eyes gravely studying his face. Then she asked:
“Were you long—on that stairway?”
“Eh? What? Oh!” Cyril's forehead grew suddenly pink. “Well?” he finished a little aggressively.
“Oh, nothing,” smiled the girl. “Of course people who live in glass houses must not throw stones.”
“Very well then, I did listen,” acknowledged the man, testily. “I liked what you were playing. I hoped, down-stairs later, that you'd play it again; but you didn't. I came to-day to hear it.”
Again Billy's heart sung within her—but again her temper rose, too.
“I don't think I feel like it,” she said sweetly, with a shake of her head. “Not to-day.”
For a brief moment Cyril stared frowningly; then his face lighted with his rare smile.
“I'm fairly checkmated,” he said, rising to his feet and going straight to the piano.
For long minutes he played, modulating from one enchanting composition to another, and finishing with the one “all chords with big bass notes” that marched on and on—the one Billy had sat long ago on the stairs to hear.
“There! Now will you play for me?” he asked, rising to his feet, and turning reproachful eyes upon her.
Billy, too, rose to her feet. Her face was flushed and her eyes were shining. Her lips quivered with emotion. As was always the case, Cyril's music had carried her quite out of herself.
“Oh, thank you, thank you,” she sighed. “You don't know—you can't know how beautiful it all is—to me!”
“Thank you. Then surely now you'll play to me,” he returned.
A look of real distress came to Billy's face.
“But I can't—not what you heard the other day,” she cried remorsefully. “You see, I was—only improvising.”
Cyril turned quickly.
“Only improvising! Billy, did you ever write it down—any of your improvising?”
An embarrassed red flew to Billy's face.
“Not—not that amounted to—well, that is, some—a little,” she stammered.
“Let me see it.”
“No, no, I couldn't—not YOU!”
Again the rare smile lighted Cyril's eyes.
“Billy, let me see that paper—please.”
Very slowly the girl turned toward the music cabinet. She hesitated, glanced once more appealingly into Cyril's face, then with nervous haste opened the little mahogany door and took from one of the shelves a sheet of manuscript music. But, like a shy child with her first copy book, she held it half behind her back as she came toward the piano.
“Thank you,” said Cyril as he reached far out for the music. The next moment he seated himself again at the piano.
Twice he played the little song through carefully, slowly.
“Now, sing it,” he directed.
Falteringly, in a very faint voice, and with very many breaths taken where they should not have been taken, Billy obeyed.
“When we want to show off your song, Billy, we won't ask you to sing it,” observed the man, dryly, when she had finished.
Billy laughed and dimpled into a blush.
“When I want to show off my song I sha'n't be singing it to you for the first time,” she pouted.
Cyril did not answer. He was playing over and over certain harmonies in the music before him.
“Hm-m; I see you've studied your counterpoint to some purpose,” he vouchsafed, finally; then: “Where did you get the words?”
The girl hesitated. The flush had deepened on her face.
“Well, I—” she stopped and gave an embarrassed laugh. “I'm like the small boy who made the toys. 'I got them all out of my own head, and there's wood enough to make another.'”
“Hm-m; indeed!” grunted the man. “Well, have you made any others?”
“One—or two, maybe.”
“Let me see them, please.”
“I think—we've had enough—for today,” she faltered.
“I haven't. Besides, if I could have a couple more to go with this, it would make a very pretty little group of songs.”
“'To go with this'! What do you mean?”
“To the publishers, of course.”
“The PUBLISHERS!”
“Certainly. Did you think you were going to keep these songs to yourself?”
“But they aren't worth it! They can't be—good enough!” Unbelieving joy was in Billy's voice.
“No? Well, we'll let others decide that,” observed Cyril, with a shrug. “All is, if you've got any more wood—like this—I advise you to make it up right away.”
“But I have already!” cried the girl, excitedly. “There are lots of little things that I've—that is, there are—some,” she corrected hastily, at the look that sprang into Cyril's eyes.
“Oh, there are,” laughed Cyril. “Well, we'll see what—” But he did not see. He did not even finish his sentence; for Billy's maid, Rosa, appeared just then with a card.
“Show Mr. Calderwell in here,” said Billy. Cyril said nothing—aloud; which was well. His thoughts, just then, were better left unspoken.