“I'm going to do it.”
“Nonsense! As if you could!” scoffed Bertram.
Billy lifted her chin.
“Couldn't I, indeed,” she retorted. “Do you realize, young man, how much I've done the last three days? How about those muffins you had this morning for breakfast, and that cake last night? And didn't you yourself say that you never ate a better pudding than that date puff yesterday noon?”
Bertram laughed and shrugged his shoulders.
“My dear love, I'm not questioning your ability to do it,” he soothed quickly. “Still,” he added, with a whimsical smile, “I must remind you that Eliza has been here half the time, and that muffins and date puffs, however delicious, aren't all there is to running a big house like this. Besides, just be sensible, Billy,” he went on more seriously, as he noted the rebellious gleam coming into his young wife's eyes; “you'd know you couldn't do it, if you'd just stop to think. There's the Carletons coming to dinner Monday, and my studio Tea to-morrow, to say nothing of the Symphony and the opera, and the concerts you'd lose because you were too dead tired to go to them. You know how it was with that concert yesterday afternoon which Alice Greggory wanted you to go to with her.”
“I didn't—want—to go,” choked Billy, under her breath.
“And there's your music. You haven't done a thing with that for days, yet only last week you told me the publishers were hurrying you for that last song to complete the group.”
“I haven't felt like—writing,” stammered Billy, still half under her breath.
“Of course you haven't,” triumphed Bertram. “You've been too dead tired. And that's just what I say. Billy, you can't do it all yourself!”