CHAPTER XXVII
MARIE, WHO LONGS TO MAKE PUDDINGS
Wonderful days came then to Billy. Four songs, it seemed, had been pronounced by competent critics decidedly “worth it”—unmistakably “good enough”; and they were to be brought out as soon as possible.
“Of course you understand,” explained Cyril, “that there's no 'hit' expected. Thank heaven they aren't that sort! And there's no great money in it, either. You'd have to write a masterpiece like 'She's my Ju-Ju Baby' or some such gem to get the 'hit' and the money. But the songs are fine, and they'll take with cultured hearers. We'll get them introduced by good singers, of course, and they'll be favorites soon for the concert stage, and for parlors.”
Billy saw a good deal of Cyril now. Already she was at work rewriting and polishing some of her half-completed melodies, and Cyril was helping her, by his interest as well as by his criticism. He was, in fact, at the house very frequently—too frequently, indeed, to suit either Bertram or Calderwell. Even William frowned sometimes when his cozy chats with Billy were interrupted by Cyril's appearing with a roll of new music for her to “try”; though William told himself that he ought to be thankful if there was anything that could make Cyril more companionable, less reserved and morose. And Cyril WAS different—there was no disputing that. Calderwell said that he had come “out of his shell”; and Bertram told Billy that she must have “found his note and struck it good and hard.”
Billy was very happy. To the little music teacher, Marie Hawthorn, she talked more freely, perhaps, than she did to any one else.
“It's so wonderful, Marie—so wonderfully wonderful,” she said one day, “to sit here in my own room and sing a little song that comes from somewhere, anywhere, out of the sky itself. Then by and by, that little song will fly away, away, over land and sea; and some day it will touch somebody's heart just as it has touched mine. Oh, Marie, is it not wonderful?”
“It is, dear—and it is not. Your songs could not help reaching somebody's heart. There's nothing wonderful in that.”
“Sweet flatterer!”
“But I mean it. They are beautiful; and so is—Mr. Henshaw's music.”