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
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