Miss Billy by Eleanor Hodgman Porter (the false prince series .TXT) 📕
The lawyer stirred restlessly and pondered.
"But, surely, my dear, isn't there some relative, somewhere?" hedemanded. "How about your mother's people?"
Billy shook her head. Her eyes filled again with tears.
There was only Aunt Ella, ever, that I knew anything about. Sheand mother were the only children there were, and mother died whenI was a year old, you know."
"But your father's people?"
"It's even worse there. He was an only child and an orphan whenmother married him. He died when I was but six months old. Afterthat there was only mother and Aunt Ella, then Aunt Ella alone; andnow--no one."
"And you know nothing of your father's people?"
"Nothing; that is--almost nothing."
"Then there is some one?"
Billy smiled. A deeper pink showed in her cheeks.
"Why, there's one--a man but he isn't really father's people,anyway. But I--I have been tempted to write to him."
"Who is he?"
"The one I'm named
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Very promptly William wrote to Billy. He told her how he missed her, and said that he had stopped trying to sort and catalogue his collections until she should be there to help him. He told her, too, after a time, of the gray kitten, “Spunkie,” that looked so much like Spunk.
In reply he received plump white envelopes directed in the round, schoolboy hand that he remembered so well. In the envelopes were letters, cheery and entertaining, like Billy herself. They thanked him for all his many kindnesses, and they told him something of what Billy was doing. They showed unbounded interest in the new kitten, and in all else that William wrote about; but they hinted very plainly that he had better not wait for her to help him out on the catalogue, for it would soon be autumn, and she would be in school.
William frowned at this, and shook his head; yet he knew that it was true.
In August William closed the Beacon street house and went to the Rangeley Lakes on a camping trip. He told himself that he would not go had it not been for a promise given to an old college friend months before. True, he had been anticipating this trip all winter; but it occurred to him now that it would be much more interesting to go to Hampden Falls and see Billy. He had been to the Rangeley Lakes, and he had not been to Hampden Falls; besides, there would be Ned Harding and those queer old maids with their shaded house and socketed chairs to see. In short, to William, at the moment, there seemed no place quite so absorbingly interesting as was Hampden Falls. But he went to the Rangeley Lakes.
In September Cyril came back from Europe, and Bertram from the Adirondacks where he had been spending the month of August. William already had arrived, and with Pete and Dong Ling had opened the house.
“Where’s Billy? Isn’t Billy here?” demanded Bertram.
“No. She isn’t back yet,” replied William.
“You don’t mean to say she’s stayed up there all summer!” exclaimed Cyril.
“Why, yes, I—I suppose so,” hesitated William. “You see, I haven’t heard but once for a month. I’ve been down in Maine, you know.”
William wrote to Billy that night.
“My dear:—” he said in part. “I hope you’ll come home right away. We want to see SOMETHING of you before you go away again, and you know the schools will be opening soon.
“By the way, it has just occurred to me as I write that perhaps, after all, you won’t have to go quite away. There are plenty of good schools for young ladies right in and near Boston, which I am sure you could attend, and still live at home. Suppose you come back then as soon as you can, and we’ll talk it up. And that reminds me, I wonder how Spunk will get along with Spunkie. Spunkie has been boarding out all August at a cat home, but he seems glad to get back to us. I am anxious to see the two little chaps together, just to find out how much alike they really do look.”
Very promptly came Billy’s answer; but William’s face, after he had read the letter, was almost as blank as it had been on that April day when Billy’s first letter came—though this time for a far different reason.
“Why, boys, she—isn’t—coming,” he announced in dismay.
“Isn’t coming!” ejaculated two astonished Voices.
“No.”
“Not—at—ALL?”
“Why, of course, later,” retorted William, with unwonted sharpness. “But not now. This is what she says.” And he read aloud:
“DEAR UNCLE WILLIAM:—You poor dear man! Did you think I’d really let you spend your time and your thought over hunting up a school for me, after all the rest you have done for me? Not a bit of it! Why, Aunt Hannah and I have been buried under school catalogues all summer, and I have studied them all until I know just which has turkey dinners on Sundays, and which ice cream at least twice a week. And it’s all settled, too, long ago. I’m going to a girls’ school up the Hudson a little way—a lovely place, I’m sure, from the pictures of it.
“Oh, and another thing; I shall go right from here. Two girls at Hampden Falls are going, and I shall go with them. Isn’t that a fine chance for me? You see it would never do, anyway, for me to go alone—me, a ‘Billy’—unless I sent a special courier ahead to announce that ‘Billy’ was a girl.
“Aunt Hannah has decided to stay here this winter in the old house. She likes it ever so much, and I don’t think I shall sell the place just yet, anyway. She will go back, of course, to Boston (after I’ve gone) to get some things at the house that she’ll want, and also to do some shopping. But she’ll let you know when she’ll be there.
“I’ll write more later, but just now I’m in a terrible rush. I only write this note to set your poor heart at rest about having to hunt up a school for me.
“With love to all,
“BILLY.”
As had happened once before after a letter from Billy had been read, there was a long pause.
“Well, by Jove!” breathed Bertram.
“It’s very sensible, I’m sure,” declared Cyril. “Still, I must confess, I would have liked to pick out her piano teacher for her.”
William said nothing—perhaps because he was reading Billy’s letter again.
At eight o’clock that night Bertram tapped on Cyril’s door.
“What’s the trouble?” demanded Cyril in answer to the look on the other’s face.
Bertram lifted his eyebrows oddly.
“I’m not sure whether you’ll call it ‘trouble’ or not,” he replied; “but I think it’s safe to say that Billy is gone—for good.”
“For good! What do you mean?—that she’s not coming back—ever?”
“Exactly that.”
“Nonsense! What’s put that notion into your head?”
“Billy’s letter first; after that, Pete.”
“Pete!”
“Yes. He came to me a few minutes ago, looking as if he had seen a ghost. It seems he swept Billy’s rooms this morning and put them in order against her coming; and tonight William told him that she wouldn’t be here at present. Pete came straight to me. He said he didn’t dare tell Mr. William, but he’d got to tell some one: there wasn’t one single thing of Miss Billy’s left in her rooms nor anywhere else in the house—not so much as a handkerchief or a hairpin.”
“Hm-m; that does look—suspicious,” murmured Cyril. “What’s up, do you think?”
“Don’t know; but something, sure. Still, of course we may be wrong. We won’t say anything to Will about it, anyhow. Poor old chap, ‘twould worry him, specially if he thought Billy’s feelings had been hurt.”
“Hurt?—nonsense! Why, we did everything for her—everything!”
“Yes, I know—and she tried to do EVERYTHING for us, too,” retorted Bertram, quizzically, as he turned away.
Early in October Mrs. Stetson arrived at the Beacon Street house, but she did not stay long.
“I’ve come for just a few things I want, and to do some shopping,” she explained.
“But Aunt Hannah,” remonstrated William, “what is the meaning of this? Why are you staying up there at Hampden Falls?”
“I like it there, William; and why shouldn’t I stay? Surely there’s no need for me to be here now, with Billy away!”
“But Billy’s coming back!”
“Of course she’s coming back,” laughed Aunt Hannah, “but not this winter, certainly. Why, William, what’s the matter? I’m sure, I think it’s a beautiful arrangement. Why, don’t you remember? It’s just what we said we wanted—to keep Billy away for awhile. And the best part of it is, it’s her own idea from the start.”
“Yes, I know, I know,” frowned William: “but I’m not sure, after all, that that idea of ours wasn’t a mistake,—a mistake that she needed to get away.”
“Never! We were just right about it,” declared Aunt Hannah, with conviction.
“And is Billy—happy?”
“She seems to be.”
“Hm-m; well, THAT’S good,” said William, as he turned to go up to his room. But as he climbed the stairs he sighed; and to hear him, one would have thought it anything but good to him—that Billy was happy.
One by one the weeks passed. Mrs. Stetson had long since gone back to Hampden Falls; and Bertram said that the Strata was beginning to look natural again. There remained now, indeed, only Spunkie, the small gray cat, to remind any one of the days that were gone— though, to be sure, there were Billy’s letters, if they might be called a reminder.
Billy did not write often. She said that she was “too busy to breathe.” Such letters as did come from her were addressed to William, though they soon came to be claimed by the entire family. Bertram and Cyril frankly demanded that William read them aloud; and even Pete always contrived to have some dusting or “puttering” within earshot—a subterfuge quite well understood, but never reproved by any of the brothers.
When the Christmas vacation drew near, William wrote that he hoped Billy and Aunt Hannah would spend it with them; but Billy answered that although she appreciated their kindness and thanked them for it, yet she must decline their invitation, as she had already invited several of the girls to go home with her to Hampden Falls for a country Christmas.
For the Easter vacation William was even more insistent—but so was Billy: she had already accepted an invitation to go home with one of the girls, and she did not think it would be at all polite to change her plans now.
William fretted not a little. Even Cyril and Bertram said that it was “too bad”; that they themselves would like to see the girl—so they would!
It was in the spring, at the close of school, however, that the heaviest blow fell: Billy was not coming to Boston even then. She wrote that she and Aunt Hannah were going to “run across the water for a little trip through the British Isles”; and that their passage was already engaged.
“And so you see,” she explained, “I shall not have a minute to spare. There’ll be only time to skip home for Aunt Hannah, and to pack the trunks before it’ll be time to start.”
Bertram looked at Cyril significantly when this letter was read aloud; and afterward he muttered in Cyril’s ear:
“You see! It’s Hampden Falls she calls ‘home’ now—not the Strata.”
“Yes, I see,” frowned Cyril. “It does look suspicious.”
Two days before the date of Billy’s expected sailing, William announced at the breakfast table that he was going away on business; might be gone until the end of the week.
“You don’t say,” commented Bertram. “I’M going tomorrow, but I’m coming back in a couple of days.”
“Hm-m;” murmured William, abstractedly. “Oh, well, I may be back before the end of the week.”
Only one meal did Cyril eat alone after his brothers had gone; then he told Pete that he had decided to take the night boat for New York. There was a little matter that called him there, he said, and he believed the trip by water would be a pleasure, the night was so fine and warm.
In New York Cyril had little trouble in finding Billy, as he knew the steamship she was to
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