``Yes,'' twinkled Billy. ``I fancy their Hygienic Immaculacies approved of Cyril's bare floors, undraped windows, and generally knick-knackless condition. Anyhow, they've made his den a sort of--of annex to the nursery.''
``But--but Cyril! What does he say?''
stammered the dumfounded Aunt Hannah. ``Think of Cyril's standing a thing like that! Doesn't he do anything--or say anything?''
Billy smiled, and lifted her brows quizzically.
``My dear Aunt Hannah, did you ever know _many_ people to have the courage to `say things'
to one of those becapped, beaproned, bespotless creatures of loftily superb superiority known as trained nurses? Besides, you wouldn't recognize Cyril now. Nobody would. He's as meek as Moses, and has been ever since his two young sons were laid in his reluctant, trembling arms. He breaks into a cold sweat at nothing, and moves about his own home as if he were a stranger and an interloper, endured merely on sufferance in this abode of strange women and strange babies.''
``Nonsense!'' scoffed Aunt Hannah.
``But it's so,'' maintained Billy, merrily.
``Now, for instance. You know Cyril always has been in the habit of venting his moods on the piano (just as I do, only more so) by playing exactly as he feels. Well, as near as I can gather, he was at his usual trick the next day after the twins arrived; and you can imagine about what sort of music it would be, after what he had been through the preceding forty-eight hours.
``Of course I don't know exactly what happened, but Julia--Marie's second maid, you know--tells the story. She's been with them long enough to know something of the way the whole household always turns on the pivot of the master's whims; so she fully appreciated the situation. She says she heard him begin to play, and that she never heard such queer, creepy, shivery music in her life; but that he hadn't been playing five minutes before one of the nurses came into the living-room where Julia was dusting, and told her to tell whoever was playing to stop that dreadful noise, as they wanted to take the twins in there for their nap.
`` `But I didn't do it, ma'am,' Julia says. `Iwa'n't lookin' for losin' my place, an' I let the young woman do the job herself. An' she done it, pert as you please. An' jest as I was seekin'
a hidin'-place for the explosion, if Mr. Henshaw didn't come out lookin' a little wild, but as meek as a lamb; an' when he sees me he asked wouldn't I please get him a cup of coffee, good an' strong.
An' I got it.'
``So you see,'' finished Billy, ``Cyril is learning things--lots of things.''
``Oh, my grief and conscience! I should say he was,'' half-shivered Aunt Hannah. ``_Cyril_looking meek as a lamb, indeed!''
Billy laughed merrily.
``Well, it must be a new experience--for Cyril. For a man whose daily existence for years has been rubber-heeled and woolen-padded, and whose family from boyhood has stood at attention and saluted if he so much as looked at them, it must be quite a change, as things are now.
However, it'll be different, of course, when Marie is on her feet again.''
``Does she know at all how things are going?''
``Not very much, as yet, though I believe she has begun to worry some. She confided to me one day that she was glad, of course, that she had two darling babies, instead of one; but that she was afraid it might be hard, just at first, to teach them both at once to be quiet; for she was afraid that while she was teaching one, the other would be sure to cry, or do something noisy.''
``Do something noisy, indeed!'' ejaculated Aunt Hannah.
``As for the real state of affairs, Marie doesn't dream that Cyril's sacred den is given over to Teddy bears and baby blankets. All is, I hope she'll be measurably strong before she does find it out,'' laughed Billy, as she rose to go.
