“Oh, wouldn't I!”
“Then you shall! We'll have a piano tomorrow in your rooms for you to practise on. And—I'll teach you myself.”
“Oh, thank you, Mr. Cyril—you don't know how I thank you!” exulted Billy, as she danced from the room to tell Aunt Hannah of this great and good thing that had come into her life.
To Billy, this promise of Cyril's to be her teacher was very kind, very delightful; but it was not in the least a thing at which to marvel. To Bertram, however, it most certainly was.
“Well, guess what's happened,” he said to William that night, after he had heard the news. “I'll believe anything now—anything: that you'll raffle off your collection of teapots at the next church fair, or that I shall go to Egypt as a 'Cooky' guide. Listen; Cyril is going to give piano lessons to Billy!—CYRIL!”
CHAPTER XIV
AUNT HANNAH SPEAKS HER MIND
Bertram said that the Strata was not a strata any longer. He declared that between them, Billy and Spunk had caused such an upheaval that there was no telling where one stratum left off and another began. What Billy had not attended to, Spunk had, he said.
“You see, it's like this,” he explained to an amused friend one day. “Billy is taking piano lessons of Cyril, and she is posing for one of my heads. Naturally, then, such feminine belongings as fancy-work, thread, thimbles, and hairpins are due to show up at any time either in Cyril's apartments or mine—to say nothing of William's; and she's in William's lots—to look for Spunk, if for no other purpose.