“But—but Cyril! What does he say?” stammered the dumfounded Aunt Hannah. “Think of Cyril's standing a thing like that! Doesn't he do anything—or say anything?”
Billy smiled, and lifted her brows quizzically.
“My dear Aunt Hannah, did you ever know many people to have the courage to 'say things' to one of those becapped, beaproned, bespotless creatures of loftily superb superiority known as trained nurses? Besides, you wouldn't recognize Cyril now. Nobody would. He's as meek as Moses, and has been ever since his two young sons were laid in his reluctant, trembling arms. He breaks into a cold sweat at nothing, and moves about his own home as if he were a stranger and an interloper, endured merely on sufferance in this abode of strange women and strange babies.”
“Nonsense!” scoffed Aunt Hannah.
“But it's so,” maintained Billy, merrily. “Now, for instance. You know Cyril always has been in the habit of venting his moods on the piano (just as I do, only more so) by playing exactly as he feels. Well, as near as I can gather, he was at his usual trick the next day after the twins arrived; and you can imagine about what sort of music it would be, after what he had been through the preceding forty-eight hours.
“Of course I don't know exactly what happened, but Julia—Marie's second maid, you know—tells the story. She's been with them long enough to know something of the way the whole household always turns on the pivot of the master's whims; so she fully appreciated the situation. She says she heard him begin to play, and that she never heard such queer, creepy, shivery music in her life; but that he hadn't been playing five minutes before one of the nurses came into the living-room where Julia was dusting, and told her to tell whoever was playing to stop that dreadful noise, as they wanted to take the twins in there for their nap.
“'But I didn't do it, ma'am,' Julia says. 'I wa'n't lookin' for losin' my place, an' I let the young woman do the job herself. An' she done it, pert as you please. An' jest as I was seekin' a hidin'-place for the explosion, if Mr. Henshaw didn't come out lookin' a little wild, but as meek as a lamb; an' when he sees me he asked wouldn't I please get him a cup of coffee, good an' strong. An' I got it.'
“So you see,” finished Billy, “Cyril is learning things—lots of things.”
“Oh, my grief and conscience! I should say he was,” half-shivered Aunt Hannah. “Cyril looking meek as a lamb, indeed!”
Billy laughed merrily.