Cyril turned abruptly.
“Thank God, some one's come,” he groaned, holding out both the babies, with an exuberance of generosity. “Billy, you've saved my life!”
Billy laughed tremulously.
“Yes, I've come, Cyril, and I'll help every bit I can; but I don't know a thing—not a single thing about them myself. Dear me, aren't they cunning? But, Cyril, do they always cry so?”
The father-of-an-hour drew himself stiffly erect.
“Cry? What do you mean? Why shouldn't they cry?” he demanded indignantly. “I want you to understand that Doctor Brown said those were A number I fine boys! Anyhow, I guess there's no doubt they've got lungs all right,” he added, with a grim smile, as he pulled out his handkerchief and drew it across his perspiring brow.
Billy did not have an opportunity to show Cyril how much or how little she knew about babies, for in another minute the maid had appeared with the extra nurse; and that young woman, with trained celerity and easy confidence, assumed instant command, and speedily had peace and order restored.
Cyril, freed from responsibility, cast longing eyes, for a moment, upon his work; but the next minute, with a despairing glance about him, he turned and fled precipitately.
Billy, following the direction of his eyes, suppressed a smile. On the top of Cyril's manuscript music on the table lay a hot-water bottle. Draped over the back of his favorite chair was a pink-bordered baby blanket. On the piano-stool rested a beribboned and beruffled baby's toilet basket. From behind the sofa pillow leered ridiculously the Teddy bear, just as it had left Cyril's desperate hand.
No wonder, indeed, that Billy smiled. Billy was thinking of what Marie had said not a week before: