"About leaving you and going off with Billy. Really, Hu, I didn't s'pose you cared, and Billy was used to me, and—I rather guess I've been a good deal selfish; but I won't, any more."
"Why, Ted!" For her head had dropped on his shoulder, and he felt the hot tears falling on his wrist.
"I like you so much better, Hu. You're my twin, and there's nobody like you, and to think I left you all alone!" In her excitement, the tears came fast.
"Ted, don't be silly! Look up, old girl! I don't want you hanging round here with me. I'll be out of this in a week, anyway."
"I know that, Hu." Theodora raised her head and spoke proudly. "But you're my twin and my other half, better than all the Billys in creation, and I ought to stay with you. What's more, I don't mean to go off again till you can go with me. Billy is Billy, and good fun; but you—" she cuddled her head against him with one of her rare demonstrations of affection—"are my Hu."
"I'm sorry, Billy," she said, that evening; "but I can't go out with you, to-morrow. Hu's shut up in the house, and I don't think it is quite fair to leave him, all the time."
"Leave him, half the time, then," Billy suggested.
Theodora shook her head.
"Hu stands first, Billy; and I must look out for him when he's ill."
Loyally she kept her word, and, for the next week, she was Hubert's constant attendant and slave. He lorded it over her and played with her by turns; but he appreciated the sacrifice she was making for him and, more than he realized, he enjoyed the return to their old intimate relation. It was not that he was jealous of Billy. It was not that Billy had intentionally come between them. There had been a time, however, when the twins were all in all to each other. Then Theodora's horizon had suddenly broadened to admit Billy. Among his many boy friends, Hubert had found no one with whom he could be on correspondingly intimate terms. He frankly avowed that he liked no one else so well as Teddy, and he had been a little hurt to find that he apparently no longer occupied a similar place in her affections. But, whatever danger there had been of their drifting apart, Hubert's opportune attack of measles seemed to have vanquished it, and the twins stood more firmly than ever before upon their old footing of mutual and unrivalled intimacy.