“Humph! Can I?” scoffed Billy. “As if I could—when Marie left strict orders that not one thing was to be touched till she got here. They arranged everything but the presents before the wedding, anyway; and Marie wants to fix those herself after she gets back. Mercy! Aunt Hannah, if I should so much as move a plate one inch in the china closet, Marie would know it—and change it when she got home,” laughed Billy, as she rose from the table. “No, I can't go to work over there.”
“But there's your music, my dear. You said you were going to write some new songs after the wedding.”
“I was,” sighed Billy, walking to the window, and looking listlessly at the bare, brown world outside; “but I can't write songs—when there aren't any songs in my head to write.”
“No, of course not; but they'll come, dear, in time. You're tired, now,” soothed Aunt Hannah, as she turned to leave the room.
“It's the reaction, of course,” murmured Aunt Hannah to herself, on the way up-stairs. “She's had the whole thing on her hands—dear child!”
A few minutes later, from the living-room, came a plaintive little minor melody. Billy was at the piano.
Kate and little Kate had, the night before, gone home with William. It had been a sudden decision, brought about by the realization that Bertram's trip to New York would leave William alone. Her trunk was to be carried there to-day, and she would leave for home from there, at the end of a two or three days' visit.
It began to snow at twelve o'clock. All the morning the sky had been gray and threatening; and the threats took visible shape at noon in myriads of white snow feathers that filled the air to the blinding point, and turned the brown, bare world into a thing of fairylike beauty. Billy, however, with a rare frown upon her face, looked out upon it with disapproving eyes.
“I was going in town—and I believe I'll go now,” she cried.
“Don't, dear, please don't,” begged Aunt Hannah. “See, the flakes are smaller now, and the wind is coming up. We're in for a blizzard—I'm sure we are. And you know you have some cold, already.”