"How long has the present feud lasted?" Billy inquired.
"Almost ten days. It's the worst one yet, and it started from nothing. I know he is your brother, Cousin Theodora; but—I really don't think it's all my fault."
"No." Theodora's voice suggested no mental reservation. "I know how it is, Cicely. Allyn has been my baby and my boy; but, much as I love him, I can't help seeing that he is cantankerous and cross-grained at times. But it is only at times, Cis; it isn't chronic."
"I wish it were. Then I shouldn't mind it so much. But when he isn't cross, he is one of the jolliest boys I have ever known. That's the worst of it, for I miss him so, when we squabble. When we are on terms, I don't care about anybody else; and so, when we are off, it leaves me all alone."
"When I squabbled with your Cousin Theodora," Billy said oracularly; "I generally felt I had done my share, and I left her to do the making up."
"So I observed," his wife answered; but Cicely was too much absorbed in her subject to heed the parenthesis.
"I'm willing to make up," she said, as she twisted Melchisedek's ears with an absent-minded fervor which caused the sufferer to whimper; "but how can I? He just goes off his way, and leaves me to go mine. I hate to tag him; besides, I don't know but he really wants to get rid of me. Hush, Melchisedek! Don't whine. I didn't intend to hurt you. That's what I meant, Cousin Ted, when I asked you about following him up. How far is it safe to go?"
"Till you get there," Mr. Farrington replied.
"Billy!" his wife remonstrated.
"All right, Ted; but I'm not altogether joking. I know boys better than you do. It's not easy for them to come down off their dignity; and, nine times out of ten, when they scowl the most darkly, they are really wishing that they knew how to come to terms. I must go down town now, Cis; but my parting advice to you is to corner Allyn and bully him into shaking hands. The boy is an ungracious cub; but he is sound at the core, and I honestly think he is fond of you in his dumb way."