“Billy isn’t coming,” said Beverly.
“I’m afraid we’ve missed him,” she assented.
“And the evening is almost over; you’ve seen everything,” Beverly went on. “It is over,” he added joyously; a drop of rain had fallen on his hand.
“Class Day is dead; the angels weep,” mused Cousin Marguerite, sentimentally. “‘I warmed both hands before the fire of life. It sinks—’”
“And are you ‘ready to depart’?” asked Beverly, eagerly; Cousin Marguerite had shied at the really vital clause of the quotation.
“‘Come, chaos—I have seen the best,’” was her answer.
But Beverly didn’t consider that he had seen the best, until the bridge car that was to bear away Cousin Marguerite appeared in Harvard Square. He would have rushed off—the rain had begun in earnest—as soon as his companion of the afternoon and evening was seated, had she not extended her plump hand for a last, lingering pressure.
“Good-bye,” she said, softly. “There are some things one cannot express; they are here,” she touched her chest lightly with the finger-tips of her left hand. “Good-bye. Oh,—I forgot to tell you,” she added abruptly, in another tone; “Billy and I discovered that we don’t spell our names the same way. We spell ours with an ‘e.’ We found it out just after he had refreshed me at Beck Hall and introduced those two sweet boys. So you see, Billy is more than a cousin; he is a friend.”
The Millstone’s good-bye smile was an inscrutable performance, in which Beverly thought he detected pity, amusement, and a sort of devilish self-satisfaction. He turned, without a word, to find Billy.
THE END