yourself. How about it? When I come back, are you going
to give me a dinner cooked by your own fair hands? Going to still play
Bridget?"

Billy laughed and shook her head.

"No; far from it. Eliza has come back, and her cousin from Vermont is
coming as second girl to help her. But I _could_ cook a dinner for you
if I had to now, sir, and it wouldn't be potato-mush and cold lamb," she
bragged shamelessly, as there sounded Bertram's peculiar ring, and the
click of his key in the lock.

It was the next afternoon that Billy called on Marie. From Marie's,
Billy went to the Annex, which was very near Cyril's new house; and
there, in Aunt Hannah's room, she had what she told Bertram afterwards
was a perfectly lovely visit.

Aunt Hannah, too, enjoyed the visit very much, though yet there was one
thing that disturbed her--the vaguely troubled look in Billy's eyes,
which to-day was more apparent than ever. Not until just before Billy
went home did something occur to give Aunt Hannah a possible clue as to
what was the meaning of it. That something was a question from Billy.

"Aunt Hannah, why don't I feel like Marie did? why don't I feel like
everybody does in books and stories? Marie went around with such a
detached, heavenly, absorbed look in her eyes, before the twins came to
her home. But I don't. I don't find anything like that in my face,
when I look in the glass. And I don't feel detached and absorbed and
heavenly. I'm happy, of course; but I can't help thinking of the dear,
dear times Bertram and I have together, just we two, and I can't seem to
imagine it at all with a third person around."

"Billy! _Third person_, indeed!"

"There! I knew 'twould shock you," mourned Billy. "It shocks me. I _want_
to feel detached and heavenly and absorbed."

"But Billy, dear, think of it--calling your own baby a third person!"

Billy sighed despairingly.

"Yes, I know. And I suppose I might as well own up to the rest of it
too. I--I'm actually afraid of babies, Aunt Hannah! Well, I am," she
reiterated, in answer to Aunt Hannah's gasp of disapproval. "I'm not
used to them at all. I never had any little brothers and sisters, and I
don't know how to treat babies. I--I'm always afraid they'll break, or
something. I'm just as afraid of the twins as I can be. How Marie can
handle them, and toss them about as she does, I don't see."

"Toss them about, indeed!"

"Well, it looks that way to me," sighed Billy. "Anyhow, I know I ca