“Billy! Third person, indeed!”
“There! I knew 'twould shock you,” mourned Billy. “It shocks me. I want to feel detached and heavenly and absorbed.”
“But Billy, dear, think of it—calling your own baby a third person!”
Billy sighed despairingly.
“Yes, I know. And I suppose I might as well own up to the rest of it too. I—I'm actually afraid of babies, Aunt Hannah! Well, I am,” she reiterated, in answer to Aunt Hannah's gasp of disapproval. “I'm not used to them at all. I never had any little brothers and sisters, and I don't know how to treat babies. I—I'm always afraid they'll break, or something. I'm just as afraid of the twins as I can be. How Marie can handle them, and toss them about as she does, I don't see.”
“Toss them about, indeed!”
“Well, it looks that way to me,” sighed Billy. “Anyhow, I know I can never get to handle them like that—and that's no way to feel! And I'm ashamed of myself because I can't be detached and heavenly and absorbed,” she added, rising to go. “Everybody always is, it seems, but just me.”
“Fiddlededee, my dear!” scoffed Aunt Hannah, patting Billy's downcast face. “Wait till a year from now, and we'll see about that third-person bugaboo you're worrying about. I'm not worrying now; so you'd better not!”