“Billy,” she began firmly, “we might as well understand each other at once. I know your good heart, and I appreciate your kindness. But I can not come to live with you. I shall not. It wouldn't be best. I should be like an interfering elder brother in your home. I should spoil your young married life; and if I went away for two months you'd never forget the utter joy and freedom of those two months with the whole house ali to yourselves.”
At the beginning of this speech Billy's eyes had still carried their dancing smile, but as the peroration progressed on to the end, a dawning surprise, which soon became a puzzled questioning, drove the smile away. Then Billy sat suddenly erect.
“Why, Aunt Hannah, that's exactly what Uncle William—” Billy stopped, and regarded Aunt Hannah with quick suspicion. The next moment she burst into gleeful laughter.
Aunt Hannah looked grieved, and not a little surprised; but Billy did not seem to notice this.
“Oh, oh, Aunt Hannah—you, too! How perfectly funny!” she gurgled. “To think you two old blesseds should get your heads together like this!”
Aunt Hannah stirred restively, and pulled the black shawl more closely about her.
“Indeed, Billy, I don't know what you mean by that,” she sighed, with a visible effort at self-control; “but I do know that I can not go to live with you.”
“Bless your heart, dear, I don't want you to,” soothed Billy, with gay promptness.
“Oh! O-h-h,” stammered Aunt Hannah, surprise, mortification, dismay, and a grieved hurt bringing a flood of color to her face. It is one thing to refuse a home, and quite another to have a home refused you.
“Oh! O-h-h, Aunt Hannah,” cried Billy, turning very red in her turn. “Please, please don't look like that. I didn't mean it that way. I do want you, dear, only—I want you somewhere else more. I want you—here.”