Miss Billy, Eleanor Hodgman Porter [motivational novels .txt] 📗
- Author: Eleanor Hodgman Porter
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“Changed? Spunk’s name changed?” demanded Billy, in a horrified voice. “Why, Aunt Hannah, it can’t be changed; it’s HIS, you know.” Then she laughed merrily. “‘Thomas,’ indeed! Why, you old dear!—just suppose I should ask YOU to change your name! Now I like ‘Helen Clarabella’ lots better than ‘Hannah,’ but I’m not going to ask you to change that—and I’m going to love you just as well, even if you are ‘Hannah’—see if I don’t! And you’ll love Spunk, too, I’m sure you will. Now watch me find the end of this snarl!” And she danced over to the dumbfounded little lady in the big chair, gave her an affectionate kiss, and then attacked the tangled mass of black with skilful fingers.
“But, I—you—oh, my grief and conscience!” finished the little woman whose name was not Helen Clarabella.—“Oh, my grief and conscience,” according to Bertram, was Aunt Hannah’s deadliest swear-word.
In Aunt Hannah’s black silk lap Spunk stretched luxuriously, and blinked sleepy eyes; then with a long purr of content he curled himself for another nap—still Spunk.
It was some time after luncheon that day that Bertram heard a knock at his studio door. Bertram was busy. His particular pet “Face of a Girl” was to be submitted soon to the judges of a forthcoming Art Exhibition, and it was not yet finished. He was trying to make up now for the many hours lost during the last few days; and even Bertram, at times, did not like interruptions. His model had gone, but he was still working rapidly when the knock came. His tone was not quite cordial when he answered.
“Well?”
“It’s I—Spunk and I. May we come in?” called a confident voice.
Bertram said a sharp word behind his teeth—but he opened the door.
“Of course! I was—painting,” he announced.
“How lovely! And I’ll watch you. Oh, my—what a pretty room!”
“I’m glad you like it.”
“Indeed I do; I like it ever so much. I shall stay here lots, I know.”
“Oh, you—will!” For once even Bertram’s ready tongue failed to find fitting response.
“Yes. Now paint. I want to see you. Aunt Hannah has gone out anyway, and I’m lonesome. I think I’ll stay.”
“But I can’t—that is, I’m not used to spectators.”
“Of course you aren’t, you poor old lonesomeness! But it isn’t going to be that way, any more, you know, now that I’ve come. I sha’n’t let you be lonesome.”
“I could swear to that,” declared the man, with sudden fervor; and for Billy’s peace of mind it was just as well, perhaps, that she did not know the exact source of that fervency.
“Now paint,” commanded Billy again.
Because he did not know what else to do, Bertram picked up a brush; but he did not paint. The first stroke of his brush against the canvas was to Spunk a challenge; and Spunk never refused a challenge. With a bound he was on Bertram’s knee, gleeful paw outstretched, batting at the end of the brush.
“Tut, tut—no, no—naughty Spunk! Say, but wasn’t that cute?” chuckled Billy. “Do it again!”
The artist gave an exasperated sigh.
“My dear girl,” he protested, “cruel as it may seem to you, this picture is not a kindergarten game for the edification of small cats. I must politely ask Spunk to desist.”
“But he won’t!” laughed Billy. “Never mind; we will take it some day when he’s asleep. Let’s not paint any more, anyhow. I’ve come to see your rooms.” And she sprang blithely to her feet. “Dear, dear, what a lot of faces!—and all girls, too! How funny! Why don’t you paint other things? Still, they are rather nice.”
“Thank you,” accepted Bertram; dryly.
Bertram did not paint any more that afternoon. Billy found much to interest her, and she asked numberless questions. She was greatly excited when she understood the full significance of the omnipresent “Face of a Girl”; and she graciously offered to pose herself for the artist. She spent, indeed, quite half an hour turning her head from side to side, and demanding “Now how’s that?— and that?” Tiring at last of this, she suggested Spunk as a substitute, remarking that, after all, cats—pretty cats like Spunk—were even nicer to paint than girls.
She rescued Spunk then from the paint-box where he had been holding high carnival with Bertram’s tubes of paint, and demanded if Bertram ever saw a more delightful, more entrancing, more altogether-to-be-desired model. She was so artless, so merry, so frankly charmed with it all that Bertram could not find it in his heart to be angry, notwithstanding his annoyance. But when at four o’clock, she took herself and her cat cheerily upstairs, he lifted his hands in despair.
“Great Scott!” he groaned. “If this is a sample of what’s coming— I’m GOING, that’s all!”
Billy had been a member of the Beacon Street household a week before she repeated her visit to Cyril at the top of the house. This time Bertram was not with her. She went alone. Even Spunk was left behind—Billy remembered her prospective host’s aversion to cats.
Billy did not feel that she knew Cyril very well. She had tried several times to chat with him; but she had made so little headway, that she finally came to the conclusion—privately expressed to Bertram—that Mr. Cyril was bashful. Bertram had only laughed. He had laughed the harder because at that moment he could hear Cyril pounding out his angry annoyance on the piano upstairs—Cyril had just escaped from one of Billy’s most determined “attempts,” and Bertram knew it. Bertram’s laugh had puzzled Billy—and it had not quite pleased her. Hence to-day she did not tell him of her plan to go upstairs and see what she could do herself, alone, to combat this “foolish bashfulness” on the part of Mr. Cyril Henshaw.
In spite of her bravery, Billy waited quite one whole minute at the top of the stairs before she had the courage to knock at Cyril’s door.
The door was opened at once.
“Why—Billy!” cried the man in surprise.
“Yes, it’s Billy. I—I came up to—to get acquainted,” she smiled winningly.
“Why, er—you are very kind. Will you—come in?”
“Thank you; yes. You see, I didn’t bring Spunk. I—remembered.”
Cyril bowed gravely.
“You are very kind—again,” he said.
Billy fidgeted in her chair. To her mind she was not “getting on” at all. She determined on a bold stroke.
“You see, I thought if—if I should come up here, where there wouldn’t be so many around, we might get acquainted,” she confided; “then I would get to like you just as well as I do the others.”
At the odd look that came into the man’s face, the girl realized suddenly what she had said. Her cheeks flushed a confused red.
“Oh, dear! That is, I mean—I like you, of course,” she floundered miserably; then she broke off with a frank laugh. “There! you see I never could get out of anything. I might as well own right up. I DON’T like you as well as I do Uncle William and Mr. Bertram. So there!”
Cyril laughed. For the first time since he had seen Billy, something that was very like interest came into his eyes.
“Oh, you don’t,” he retorted. “Now that is—er—very UNkind of you.”
Billy shook her head.
“You don’t say that as if you meant it,” she accused him, her eyes gravely studying his face. “Now I’M in earnest. I really want to like YOU!”
“Thank you. Then perhaps you won’t mind telling me why you don’t like me,” he suggested.
Again Billy flushed.
“Why, I—I just don’t; that’s all,” she faltered. Then she cried aggrievedly: “There, now! you’ve made me be impolite; and I didn’t mean to be, truly.”
“Of course not,” assented the man; “and it wasn’t impolite, because I asked you for the information, you know. I may conclude then,” he went on with an odd twinkle in his eyes, “that I am merely classed with tripe and rainy days.”
“With—wha-at?”
“Tripe and rainy days. Those are the only things, if I remember rightly, that you don’t like.”
The girl stared; then she chuckled.
“There! I knew I’d like you better if you’d only SAY something,” she beamed. “But let’s not talk any more about that. Play to me; won’t you? You know you promised me ‘The Maiden’s Prayer.’”
Cyril stiffened.
“Pardon me, but you must be mistaken,” he replied coldly. “I do not play ‘The Maiden’s Prayer.’”
“Oh, what a shame! And I do so love it! But you play other things; I’ve heard you a little, and Mr. Bertram says you do—in concerts and things.”
“Does he?” murmured Cyril, with a slight lifting of his eyebrows.
“There! Now off you go again all silent and horrid!” chaffed Billy. “What have I said now? Mr. Cyril—do you know what I think? I believe you’ve got NERVES!” Billy’s voice was so tragic that the man could but laugh.
“Perhaps I have, Miss Billy.”
“Like Miss Letty’s?”
“I’m not acquainted with the lady.”
“Gee! wouldn’t you two make a pair!” chuckled Billy unexpectedly. “No; but, really, I mean—do you want people to walk on tiptoe and speak in whispers?”
“Sometimes, perhaps.”
The girl sprang to her feet—but she sighed.
“Then I’m going. This might be one of the times, you know.” She hesitated, then walked to the piano. “My, wouldn’t I like to play on that!” she breathed.
Cyril shuddered. Cyril could imagine what Billy would play—and Cyril did not like “ragtime,” nor “The Storm.”
“Oh, do you play?” he asked constrainedly.
Billy shook her head.
“Not much. Only little bits of things, you know,” she said wistfully, as she turned toward the door.
For some minutes after she had gone, Cyril stood where she had left him, his eyes moody and troubled.
“I suppose I might have played—something,” he muttered at last; “but—‘The Maiden’s Prayer’!—good heavens!”
Billy was a little shy with Cyril when he came down to dinner that night. For the next few days, indeed, she held herself very obviously aloof from him. Cyril caught himself wondering once if she were afraid of his “nerves.” He did not try to find out, however; he was too emphatically content that of her own accord she seemed to be leaving him in peace.
It must have been a week after Billy’s visit to the top of the house that Cyril stopped his playing very abruptly one day, and opened his door to go downstairs. At the first step he started back in amazement.
“Why, Billy!” he ejaculated.
The girl was sitting very near the top of the stairway. At his appearance she got to her feet shamefacedly.
“Why, Billy, what in the world are you doing there?”
“Listening.”
“Listening!”
“Yes. Do you mind?”
The man did not answer. He was too surprised to find words at once, and he was trying to recollect what he had been playing.
“You see, listening to music this way isn’t like listening to—to talking,” hurried on Billy, feverishly. “It isn’t sneaking like that; is it?”
“Why—no.”
“And you don’t mind?”
“Why, surely, I ought not to mind—that,” he admitted.
“Then I can keep right on as I have done. Thank you,” sighed Billy, in relief.
“Keep right on! Have you been here before?”
“Why, yes, lots of days. And, say, Mr. Cyril, what is that—that thing that’s all chords with big bass notes that keep saying something so fine and splendid that it marches on and on, getting bigger and grander, just as if there couldn’t anything stop it, until it all ends in one great burst of triumph? Mr. Cyril, what is that?”
“Why, Billy!”—the interest this time in the man’s face was not faint—“I wish I might make others catch my meaning as I have evidently
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