Dot' and a 'Dimple.' Great Scott!" And, entirely
forgetting what he had come to the nursery for, Cyril strode from the
room.

"Ah--goo--spggggh!" commented baby from the middle of the floor.

It was on a very windy March day that Bertram Henshaw's son, Bertram,
Jr., arrived at the Strata. Billy went so far into the Valley of the
Shadow of Death for her baby that it was some days before she realized
in all its importance the presence of the new member of her family. Even
when the days had become weeks, and Bertram, Jr., was a month and a
half old, the extreme lassitude and weariness of his young mother was a
source of ever-growing anxiety to her family and friends. Billy was so
unlike herself, they all said.

"If something could only rouse her," suggested the Henshaw's old
family physician one day. "A certain sort of mental shock--if not too
severe--would do the deed, I think, and with no injury--only benefit.
Her physical condition is in just the state that needs a stimulus to
stir it into new life and vigor."

As it happened, this was said on a certain Monday. Two days later
Bertram's sister Kate, on her way with her husband to Mr. Hartwell's old
home in Vermont, stopped over in Boston for a two days' visit. She made
her headquarters at Cyril's home, but very naturally she went, without
much delay, to pay her respects to Bertram, Jr.

"Mr. Hartwell's brother isn't well," she explained to Billy, after
the greetings were over. "You know he's the only one left there, since
Mother and Father Hartwell came West. We shall go right on up to Vermont
in a couple of days, but we just had to stay over long enough to see the
baby; and we hadn't ever seen the twins, either, you know. By the way,
how perfectly ridiculous Cyril is over those boys!"

"Is he?" smiled Billy, faintly.

"Yes. One would think there were never any babies born before, to hear
him talk. He thinks they're the most wonderful things in the world--and
they are cunning little fellows, I'll admit. But Cyril thinks they
_know_ so much," went on Kate, laughingly. "He's always bragging of
something one or the other of them has done. Think of it--_Cyril!_ Marie
says it all started from the time last January when he discovered the
nurses had been calling them Dot and Dimple."

"Yes, I know," smiled Billy again, faintly, lifting a thin, white, very
un-Billy-like hand to her head.

Kate frowned, and regarded her sister-in-law thoughtfully.

"Mercy! how you l