"Billy, who taught you to play?"

"No one. I can't play. I can only pick out little bits of things in C."

"But you do play. I just heard you."

Billy shrugged her shoulders.

"That was nothing. It was only what I had heard. I was trying to make it sound like--yours."

"And, by George! you succeeded," muttered Cyril under his breath; then aloud he asked: "Didn't you ever study music?"

Billy's eyes dimmed.

"No. That was the only thing Aunt Ella and I didn't think alike about.

She had an old square piano, all tin-panny and thin, you know. I played some on it, and wanted to take lessons; but I didn't want to practise on that. I wanted a new one. That's what she wouldn't do--get me a new piano, or let me do it. She said SHE practised on that piano, and that it was quite good enough for me, especially to learn on. I--I'm afraid I got stuffy. I hated that piano so! But I was almost ready to give in when--when Aunt Ella died."

"And all you play then is just by ear?"

"By--ear? I suppose so--if you mean what I hear. Easy things I can play quick, but--but those chords ARE hard; they skip around so!"

Cyril smiled oddly.

"I should say so," he agreed. "But perhaps there is something else that I play--that you like. Is there?"

"Oh, yes. Now there's that little thing that swings and sways like this," cried Billy, dropping herself on to the piano stool and whisking about. Billy was not afraid now, nor defiant. She was only eager and happy again. In a moment a dreamy waltz fell upon Cyril's ears--a waltz that he often played himself. It was not played correctly, it is true.

There were notes, and sometimes whole measures, that were very different from the printed music. But the tune, the rhythm, and the spirit were there.

"And there's this," said Billy; "and this," she went on, sliding into one little strain after another--all of which were recognized by the amazed man at her side.

"Billy," he cried, when she had finished and whirled upon him again, "Billy, would you like to learn to play--really play from notes?"

"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 s.p.u.n.k had caused such an upheaval that there was no telling where one stratum left off and another began. What Billy had not attended to, s.p.u.n.k 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 s.p.u.n.k, if for no other purpose.

"You must know that s.p.u.n.k likes William's floor the best of the bunch, there are so many delightful things to play with. Not that s.p.u.n.k stays there--dear me, no. He's a sociable little chap, and his usual course is to pounce on a shelf, knock off some object that tickles his fancy, then lug it in his mouth to--well, anywhere that he happens to feel like going. Cyril has found him up-stairs with a small miniature, battered and chewed almost beyond recognition. And Aunt Hannah nearly had a fit one day when he appeared in her room with an enormous hard-sh.e.l.led black bug--dead, of course--that he had fished from a case that Pete had left open. As for me, I can swear that the little round white stone he was playing with in my part of the house was one of William's Collection Number One.

"And that isn't all," Bertram continued. "Billy brings her music down to show to me, and lugs my heads all over the rest of the house to show to other folks. And there is always everywhere a knit shawl, for Aunt Hannah is sure to feel a draught, and Billy keeps shawls handy. So there you are! We certainly aren't a strata any longer," he finished.

Billy was, indeed, very much at home in the Beacon Street house--too much so, Aunt Hannah thought. Aunt Hannah was, in fact, seriously disturbed. To William one evening, late in May, she spoke her mind.

"William, what are you going to do with Billy?" she asked abruptly.

"Do with her? What do you mean?" returned William with the contented smile that was so often on his lips these days. "This is Billy's home."

"That's the worst of it," sighed the woman, with a shake of her head.

"The worst of it! Aunt Hannah, what do you mean? Don't you like Billy?"

"Yes, yes, William, of course I like Billy. I love her! Who could help it? That's not what I mean. It's of Billy I'm thinking, and of the rest of you. She can't stay here like this. She must go away, to school, or--or somewhere."

"And she's going in September," replied the man. "She'll go to preparatory school first, and to college, probably."

"Yes, but now--right away. She ought to go--somewhere."

"Why, yes, for the summer, of course. But those plans aren't completed yet. Billy and I were talking of it last evening. You know the boys are always away more or less, but I seldom go until August, and we let Pete and Dong Ling off then for a month and close the house. I told Billy I'd send you and her anywhere she liked for the whole summer, but she says no. She prefers to stay here with me. But I don't quite fancy that idea--through all the hot June and July--so I don't know but I'll get a cottage somewhere near at one of the beaches, where I can run back and forth night and morning. Of course, in that case, we take Pete and Dong Ling with us and close the house right away. I fear Cyril would not fancy it much; but, after all, he and Bertram would be off more or less.

They always are in the summer."

"But, William, you haven't yet got my idea at all," demurred Aunt Hannah, with a discouraged shake of her head. "It's away!--away from all this--from you--that I want to get Billy."

"Away! Away from me," cried the man, with an odd intonation of terror, as he started forward in his chair. "Why, Aunt Hannah, what are you talking about?"

"About Billy. This is no place in which to bring up a young girl--a young girl who has not one shred of relationship to excuse it."

"But she is my namesake, and quite alone in the world, Aunt Hannah; quite alone--poor child!"

"My dear William, that is exactly it--she is a child, and yet she is not. That's where the trouble lies."

"What do you mean?"

"William, Billy has been brought up in a little country town with a spinster aunt and a whole good-natured, tolerant village for company.

Well, she has accepted you and your entire household, even down to Dong Ling, on the same basis."

"Well, I'm sure I'm glad," a.s.serted the man with genial warmth. "It's good for us to have her here. It's good for the boys. She's already livened Cyril up and toned Bertram down. I may as well confess, Aunt Hannah, that I've been more than a little disturbed about Bertram of late. I don't like that Bob Seaver that he is so fond of; and some other fellows, too, that have been coming here altogether too much during the last year. Bertram says they're only a little 'Bohemian' in their tastes. And to me that's the worst of it, for Bertram himself is quite too much inclined that way."

"Exactly, William. And that only goes to prove what I said before.

Bertram is not a spinster aunt, and neither are any of the rest of you.

But Billy takes you that way."

"Takes us that way--as spinster aunts!"