Miss Billy Part 21

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," a.s.serted Bertram, promptly; "and we have done everything to get ready for you, too, even to rigging up s.p.u.n.kie to masquerade as s.p.u.n.k. 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."

CHAPTER XXII

HUGH CALDERWELL

In the Beacon Street house William mournfully removed the huge pink bow from s.p.u.n.kie'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 a.s.sist 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 s.p.u.n.k 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 a.s.sured 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 const.i.tutes his charm."