"How can I do anything, with you all standing here to criticise me?"

"Oh, Teddy, how selfish!" Hope's tone was rebuking.

"I don't care. Do go in!" she said petulantly, as she started to mount.

"Can't you mount any better than that, after all those lessons?" Phebe asked, a moment later, as Theodora picked herself up from beneath her wheel. "I know I could do better than that."

"Try it, then." Theodora faced her little sister hotly.

Phebe drew back.

"I'm--I'm going to the post-office with Isabel, and her mother told us to hurry."

Allyn added his voice to the chorus.

"Wait," he proclaimed; "I wants to talk. Phebe spokes so much, she takes up all the room."

"What now, Allyn?" Hope inquired.

"Teddy tumbled over," he returned gravely. "I should fink she could ride now, and not tumble over so much."

There was a silence, while Theodora wrestled with her feelings and her wheel. Then Hubert's voice rang down from an upper window, clear and encouraging,--

"Try it again, Ted. You're all right, only you don't know it."

She did try it again, and went reeling down the street and in at the Farringtons' gate, where Billy met her with applause. The more stable nature of his own machine had allowed him to master it at once, and now he was only waiting for Theodora, that they might start forth together and conquer the world.

The days flew by, each one more perfect than the last. In the golden May weather, when the world never looks more green and fresh and lovable than in its yellow sunshine, they rode forth to take their places in the young life about them. It was scarcely more new to Billy than to Theodora. Everything wears a changed aspect when viewed from the saddle, and the girl felt that never before had she seen in its full beauty the miracle of the opening leaves. For a few days, Dr. McAlister watched Billy with some degree of care, fearful lest he be led too far by his new enthusiasm, and exhaust his strength. Then the doctor breathed a sigh of relief. Billy throve under it as a true boy should do, and, from week to week, he gained new vigor as fast as he gained new sunburn.

Hubert, meanwhile, was pa.s.sing through an ignominious experience. He was having measles. Alone of all the McAlisters, he had contrived to escape the epidemic of two years before. Even Allyn had had it, and Billy Farrington counted his convalescence as among the golden memories of his boyhood, no school and endless goodies. For Hubert, sixteen years old and five feet, ten inches, in height, it was reserved to go through the disease alone. He was not seriously ill; but his whole soul revolted at the babyish nature of his complaint, and at the tedium of the darkened room.

"Where going, Ted?" he demanded, one day.

"To ride with Billy."

"Bother Billy! I hate him."

"What for?" Theodora stared at her brother in open-eyed consternation.

"Because he's always round in the way. You aren't good for anything, now he's here, always running off with him," Hubert grumbled.

"Poor Billy! How'd you like it not to be able to go out alone? He needs me."

"I can't go out at all."

"But he's been so for more than a year," Theodora said sharply; "and you have only been in the house four days. I should think you could stand that."

"I should think you could stay in, once in a while, with your own brother," Hubert retorted. "Charity begins at home."

"But I promised Billy--"

"I don't want you. Do get out and let me alone."

As a rule, Hubert was the most even-tempered of boys. Now, however, he felt himself aggrieved and deserted, and his tone was not altogether amicable.

"How cross you are!" Theodora snapped.

"Oh, get out!" And Hubert turned his back on his sister and yawned.

The door closed with a bang, and he heard Theodora's feet descending the stairway, with a vengeful thump on every step. Then he yawned again.

There was nothing on earth to do; he was not ill enough to make it interesting, only a bore. Time was when Theodora would have stuck to him like a burr, and they would have contrived to have some fun out of even such untoward circ.u.mstances as this. Now she deserted him and went off with that confounded Billy. At this point in his musings, he dropped to sleep.

In the mean time, Billy was having a bad afternoon of it. Never had he seen Theodora in a more fractious mood. She scolded about the road and the heat, snubbed all his sympathetic suggestions, and contradicted all his efforts at conversation. Under such conditions, the ride was a short one, and it was less than an hour from the time they had started that they reappeared in the Farringtons' drive. Theodora refused all invitation to stop.

"Thanks; but I must get home," she said curtly, and she rode away with her teeth set and her chin aggressively in the air, leaving Billy with the impression that he had unintentionally stepped into a hornets' nest.

Hope was spending the day with a friend, and Mrs. McAlister was superintending some belated house-cleaning, so that Hubert was alone, as when she had left him. She ran directly up to his room; but, when she saw that he was asleep, her step softened, and she stealthily advanced to his side and sat down on the edge of the bed. Something of the mood in which he had gone to sleep still remained, and his boyish face, even in his dreams, was dull and unhappy. Theodora reproached herself, as she sat looking down at him. She reproached herself more, while she looked about at the disorderly room and recalled her mother's words, as they left the dinner-table, that noon.

"I shall be busy, this afternoon, Teddy, so I shall leave Hu in your care."

A vase of fading flowers stood on the table, and beside it was a plate of half-eaten fruit. Odds and ends of clothing lay about, and the bed on which he had thrown himself looked tumbled and unattractive. It seemed impossible that, since the morning, a room could get into such a state of dire disorder.

Rising, she crept softly about the room, setting things to rights and giving the place the look of feminine daintiness which she knew so well how to impart. Not even Hope had so much of the true home-making instinct as Theodora, when she chose to turn her wayward interest in that direction; and within a few moments the room looked a different place altogether.

Hubert stirred slightly, and Theodora whisked her duster out of sight and went back to the bed.

"Hu, I'm awfully sorry," she said, in explosive contrition. "I never meant to be so piggable."

The memory of their brief pa.s.sage at arms had faded from Hubert's mind, and he answered, with a yawn,--

"What do you mean?"

"About leaving you and going off with Billy. Really, Hu, I didn't s'pose you cared, and Billy was used to me, and--I rather guess I've been a good deal selfish; but I won't, any more."

"Why, Ted!" For her head had dropped on his shoulder, and he felt the hot tears falling on his wrist.

"I like you so much better, Hu. You're my twin, and there's n.o.body like you, and to think I left you all alone!" In her excitement, the tears came fast.

"Ted, don't be silly! Look up, old girl! I don't want you hanging round here with me. I'll be out of this in a week, anyway."

"I know that, Hu." Theodora raised her head and spoke proudly. "But you're my twin and my other half, better than all the Billys in creation, and I ought to stay with you. What's more, I don't mean to go off again till you can go with me. Billy is Billy, and good fun; but you--" she cuddled her head against him with one of her rare demonstrations of affection--"are my Hu."

"I'm sorry, Billy," she said, that evening; "but I can't go out with you, to-morrow. Hu's shut up in the house, and I don't think it is quite fair to leave him, all the time."

"Leave him, half the time, then," Billy suggested.

Theodora shook her head.