"Well, you haven"t yet told me everything about everybody, you know,"
she hinted smilingly. "You might begin that--I mean the less important everybodies, of course, now that I"ve heard about you."
"Meaning--"
"Oh, Aunt Hannah, and the Greggorys, and Cyril and Marie, and the twins, and Mr. Arkwright, and all the rest."
"But you"ve had letters, surely."
"Yes, I"ve had letters from some of them, and I"ve seen most of them since I came back. It"s just that I wanted to know _your_ viewpoint of what"s happened through the summer."
"Very well. Aunt Hannah is as dear as ever, wears just as many shawls, and still keeps her clock striking twelve when it"s half-past eleven.
Mrs. Greggory is just as sweet as ever--and a little more frail, I fear,--bless her heart! Mr. Arkwright is still abroad, as I presume you know. I hear he is doing great stunts over there, and will sing in Berlin and Paris this winter. I"m thinking of going across from Panama later. If I do I shall look him up. Mr. and Mrs. Cyril are as well as could be expected when you realize that they haven"t yet settled on a pair of names for the twins."
"I know it--and the poor little things three months old, too! I think it"s a shame. You"ve heard the reason, I suppose. Cyril declares that naming babies is one of the most serious and delicate operations in the world, and that, for his part, he thinks people ought to select their own names when they"ve arrived at years of discretion. He wants to wait till the twins are eighteen, and then make each of them a birthday present of the name of their own choosing."
"Well, if that isn"t the limit!" laughed Calderwell. "I"d heard some such thing before, but I hadn"t supposed it was really so."
"Well, it is. He says he knows more tomboys and enormous fat women named "Grace" and "Lily," and sweet little mouse-like ladies staggering along under a sonorous "Jerusha Theodosia" or "Zen.o.bia Jane"; and that if he should name the boys "Franz" and "Felix" after Schubert and Mendelssohn as Marie wants to, they"d as likely as not turn out to be men who hated the sound of music and doted on stocks and dry goods."
"Humph!" grunted Calderwell. "I saw Cyril last week, and he said he hadn"t named the twins yet, but he didn"t tell me why. I offered him two perfectly good names myself, but he didn"t seem interested."
"What were they?"
"Eldad and Bildad."
"Hugh!" protested Billy.
"Well, why not?" bridled the man. "I"m sure those are new and unique, and really musical, too--"way ahead of your Franz and Felix."
"But those aren"t really names!"
"Indeed they are."
"Where did you get them?"
"Off our family tree, though they"re Bible names, Belle says. Perhaps you didn"t know, but Sister Belle has been making the dirt fly quite lively of late around that family tree of ours, and she wrote me some of her discoveries. It seems two of the roots, or branches--say, are ancestors roots, or branches?--were called Eldad and Bildad. Now I thought those names were good enough to pa.s.s along, but, as I said before, Cyril wasn"t interested."
"I should say not," laughed Billy. "But, honestly, Hugh, it"s really serious. Marie wants them named _something_, but she doesn"t say much to Cyril. Marie wouldn"t really breathe, you know, if she thought Cyril disapproved of breathing. And in this case Cyril does not hesitate to declare that the boys shall name themselves."
"What a situation!" laughed Calderwell.
"Isn"t it? But, do you know, I can sympathize with it, in a way, for I"ve always mourned so over _my_ name. "Billy" was always such a trial to me! Poor Uncle William wasn"t the only one that prepared guns and fishing rods to entertain the expected boy. I don"t know, though, I"m afraid if I"d been allowed to select my name I should have been a "Helen Clarabella" all my days, for that was the name I gave all my dolls, with "first," "second," "third," and so on, added to them for distinction.
Evidently I thought that "Helen Clarabella" was the most feminine appellation possible, and the most foreign to the despised "Billy." So you see I can sympathize with Cyril to a certain extent."
"But they must call the little chaps _something_, now," argued Hugh.
Billy gave a sudden merry laugh.
"They do," she gurgled, "and that"s the funniest part of it. Oh, Cyril doesn"t. He always calls them impersonally "they" or "it." He doesn"t see much of them anyway, now, I understand. Marie was horrified when she realized how the nurses had been using his den as a nursery annex and she changed all that instanter, when she took charge of things again.
The twins stay in the nursery now, I"m told. But about the names--the nurses, it seems, have got into the way of calling them "Dot" and "Dimple." One has a dimple in his cheek, and the other is a little smaller of the two. Marie is no end distressed, particularly as she finds that she herself calls them that; and she says the idea of boys being "Dot" and "Dimple"!"
"I should say so," laughed Calderwell. "Not I regard that as worse than my "Eldad" and "Bildad.""
"I know it, and Alice says--By the way, you haven"t mentioned Alice, but I suppose you see her occasionally."
Billy paused in evident expectation of a reply. Billy was, in fact, quite pluming herself on the adroit casualness with which she had introduced the subject nearest her heart.
Calderwell raised his eyebrows.
"Oh, yes, I see her."
"But you hadn"t mentioned her."
There was the briefest of pauses; then with a half-quizzical dejection, there came the remark:
"You seem to forget. I told you that I stayed here this summer for reasons too numerous, and one too heart-breaking, to mention. She was the _one_."
"You mean--"
"Yes. The usual thing. She turned me down. Oh, I haven"t asked her yet as many times as I did you, but--"
"_Hugh!_"
Hugh tossed her a grim smile and went on imperturbably.
"I"m older now, of course, and know more, perhaps. Besides, the finality of her remarks was not to be mistaken."
Billy, in spite of her sympathy for Calderwell, was conscious of a throb of relief that at least one stumbling-block was removed from Arkwright"s possible pathway to Alice"s heart.
"Did she give any special reason?" hazarded Billy, a shade too anxiously.
"Oh, yes. She said she wasn"t going to marry anybody--only her music."
"Nonsense!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Billy, falling back in her chair a little.
"Yes, I said that, too," gloomed the man; "but it didn"t do any good.
You see, I had known another girl who"d said the same thing once." (He did not look up, but a vivid red flamed suddenly into Billy"s cheeks.) "And she--when the right one came--forgot all about the music, and married the man. So I naturally suspected that Alice would do the same thing. In fact, I said so to her. I was bold enough to even call the man by name--I hadn"t been jealous of Arkwright for nothing, you see--but she denied it, and flew into such an indignant allegation that there wasn"t a word of truth in it, that I had to sue for pardon before I got anything like peace."
"Oh-h!" said Billy, in a disappointed voice, falling quite back in her chair this time.
"And so that"s why I"m wanting especially just now to see the wheels go "round," smiled Calderwell, a little wistfully. "Oh, I shall get over it, I suppose. It isn"t the first time, I"ll own--but some day I take it there will be a last time. Enough of this, however! You haven"t told me a thing about yourself. How about it? When I come back, are you going to give me a dinner cooked by your own fair hands? Going to still play Bridget?"
Billy laughed and shook her head.
"No; far from it. Eliza has come back, and her cousin from Vermont is coming as second girl to help her. But I _could_ cook a dinner for you if I had to now, sir, and it wouldn"t be potato-mush and cold lamb," she bragged shamelessly, as there sounded Bertram"s peculiar ring, and the click of his key in the lock.
It was the next afternoon that Billy called on Marie. From Marie"s, Billy went to the Annex, which was very near Cyril"s new house; and there, in Aunt Hannah"s room, she had what she told Bertram afterwards was a perfectly lovely visit.