Miss Billy Part 22

"I'm so glad! And is it still the 'Face of a Girl'?"

"Yes; only he's doing straight portraiture now as well. It's got to be quite the thing to be 'done' by Henshaw; and there's many a fair lady that has graciously commissioned him to paint her portrait. He's a fine fellow, too--a mighty fine fellow. You may not know, perhaps, but three or four years ago he was--well, not wild, but 'frolicsome,' he would probably have called it. He got in with a lot of fellows that--well, that weren't good for a chap of Bertram's temperament."

"Like--Mr. Seaver?"

Calderwell turned sharply.

"Did YOU know Seaver?" he demanded in obvious surprise.

"I used to SEE him--with Bertram."

"Oh! Well, he WAS one of them, unfortunately. But Bertram shipped him years ago."

Billy gave a sudden radiant smile--but she changed the subject at once.

"And Mr. William still collects, I suppose," she observed.

"Jove! I should say he did! I've forgotten the latest; but he's a fine fellow, too, like Bertram."

"And--Mr. Cyril?"

Calderwell frowned.

"That chap's a poser for me, Billy, and no mistake. I can't make him out!"

"What's the matter?"

"I don't know. Probably I'm not 'tuned to his pitch.' Bertram told me once that Cyril was very sensitively strung, and never responded until a certain note was struck. Well, I haven't ever found that note, I reckon."

Billy laughed.

"I never heard Bertram say that, but I think I know what he means; and he's right, too. I begin to realize now what a jangling discord I must have created when I tried to harmonize with him three years ago! But what is he doing in his music?"

The other shrugged his shoulders.

"Same thing. Plays occasionally, and plays well, too; but he's so erratic it's difficult to get him to do it. Everything must be just so, you know--air, light, piano, and audience. He's got another book out, I'm told--a profound treatise on somebody's something or other--musical, of course."

"And he used to write music; doesn't he do that any more?"

"I believe so. I hear of it occasionally through musical friends of mine. They even play it to me sometimes. But I can't stand for much of it--his stuff--really, Billy."

"'Stuff' indeed! And why not?" An odd hostility showed in Billy's eyes.

Again Calderwell shrugged his shoulders.

"Don't ask me. I don't know. But they're always dead slow, somber things, with the wail of a lost spirit shrieking through them."

"But I just love lost spirits that wail," avowed Billy, with more than a shade of reproach in her voice.

Calderwell stared; then he shook his head.

"Not in mine, thank you;" he retorted whimsically. "I prefer my spirits of a more sane and cheerful sort."

The girl laughed, but almost instantly she fell silent.

"I've been wondering," she began musingly, after a time, "why some one of those three men does not--marry."

"You wouldn't wonder--if you knew them better," declared Calderwell.

"Now think. Let's begin at the top of the Strata--by the way, Bertram's name for that establishment is mighty clever! First, Cyril: according to Bertram Cyril hates 'all kinds of women and other confusion'; and I fancy Bertram hits it about right. So that settles Cyril. Then there's William--you know William. Any girl would say William was a dear; but William isn't a MARRYING man. Dad says,"--Calderwell's voice softened a little--"dad says that William and his young wife were the most devoted couple that he ever saw; and that when she died she seemed to take with her the whole of William's heart--that is, what hadn't gone with the baby a few years before. There was a boy, you know, that died."

"Yes, I know," nodded Billy, quick tears in her eyes. "Aunt Hannah told me."

"Well, that counts out William, then," said Calderwell, with an air of finality.

"But how about Bertram? You haven't settled Bertram," laughed Billy, archly.

"Bertram!" Calderwell's eyes widened. "Billy, can you imagine Bertram's making love in real earnest to a girl?"

"Why, I--don't--know; maybe!" Billy tipped her head from side to side as if she were viewing a picture set up for her inspection.

"Well, I can't. In the first place, no girl would think he was serious; or if by any chance she did, she'd soon discover that it was the turn of her head or the tilt of her chin that he admired--TO PAINT. Now isn't that so?"

Billy laughed, but she did not answer.

"It is, and you know it," declared Calderwell. "And that settles him.

Now you can see, perhaps, why none of these men--will marry."

It was a long minute before Billy spoke.

"Not a bit of it. I don't see it at all," she declared with roguish merriment. "Moreover, I think that some day, some one of them--will marry, Sir Doubtful!"

Calderwell threw a quick glance into her eyes. Evidently something he saw there sent a swift shadow to his own. He waited a moment, then asked abruptly:

"Billy, WON'T you marry me?"

Billy frowned, though her eyes still laughed.

"Hugh, I told you not to ask me that again," she demurred.

"And I told you not to ask impossibilities of me," he retorted imperturbably. "Billy, won't you, now--seriously?"

"Seriously, no, Hugh. Please don't let us go all over that again when we've done it so many times."

"No, let's don't," agreed the man, cheerfully. "And we don't have to, either, if you'll only say 'yes,' now right away, without any more fuss."

Billy sighed impatiently.

"Hugh, won't you understand that I'm serious?" she cried; then she turned suddenly, with a peculiar flash in her eyes.