cript music on the table lay a hot-water bottle.
Draped over the back of his favorite chair was a pink-bordered baby
blanket. On the piano-stool rested a beribboned and beruffled baby's
toilet basket. From behind the sofa pillow leered ridiculously the Teddy
bear, just as it had left Cyril's desperate hand.

No wonder, indeed, that Billy smiled. Billy was thinking of what Marie
had said not a week before:

"I shall keep the baby, of course, in the nursery. I've been in homes
where they've had baby things strewn from one end of the house to
the other; but it won't be that way here. In the first place, I don't
believe in it; but, even if I did, I'd have to be careful on account
of Cyril. Imagine Cyril's trying to write his music with a baby in
the room! No! I shall keep the baby in the nursery, if possible; but
wherever it is, it won't be anywhere near Cyril's den, anyway."

Billy suppressed many a smile during the days that immediately followed
the coming of the twins. Some of the smiles, however, refused to be
suppressed. They became, indeed, shamelessly audible chuckles.

Billy was to sail the tenth, and, naturally, during those early July
days, her time was pretty much occupied with her preparations for
departure; but nothing could keep her from frequent, though short,
visits to the home of her brother-in-law.

The twins were proving themselves to be fine, healthy boys. Two trained
maids, and two trained nurses ruled the household with a rod of iron. As
to Cyril--Billy declared that Cyril was learning something every day of
his life now.

"Oh, yes, he's learning things," she said to Aunt Hannah, one morning;
"lots of things. For instance: he has his breakfast now, not when he
wants it, but when the maid wants to give it to him--which is precisely
at eight o'clock every morning. So he's learning punctuality. And for
the first time in his life he has discovered the astounding fact that
there are several things more important in the world than is the special
piece of music he happens to be composing--chiefly the twins' bath, the
twins' nap, the twins' airing, and the twins' colic."

Aunt Hannah laughed, though she frowned, too.

"But, surely, Billy, with two nurses and the maids, Cyril doesn't have
to--to--" She came to a helpless pause.

"Oh, no," laughed Billy; "Cyril doesn't have to really attend to any of
those things--though I have seen each of the nurses, at different times,
unhesitatingly thrust a twin i