United States or Guyana ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
She was thinking of Alice Greggory, and wondering if, indeed, Alice did care; and if she, Billy, might dare to assure this man what she believed to be true that his sweetheart was only waiting for him to come to her and tell her that he loved her. Arkwright saw the color sweep to Billy's forehead, and took sudden courage. He leaned forward eagerly. A tender light came to his eyes.
"Why, he's going to marry Alice Greggory. I know he is! I can see it as plain as day in her letters. He's there a lot." "And you never did think for a minute, Billy, that you cared for him?" Bertram's gaze searched Billy's face a little fearfully. He had not been slow to mark that swift lowering of her eyelids.
"My 'Daily Guide for Mothers' says that a time for everything and everything in its time, is the very A B C and whole alphabet of Right Training. He does everything by the clock, and to the minute," declared Billy, proudly. Aunt Hannah sniffed, obviously skeptical and rebellious. Alice Greggory laughed.
Would anything ever blot out those awful words: "If you would tend to your husband and your home a little more, and go gallivanting off with Calderwell and Arkwright and Alice Greggory a little less "? It seemed now that always, for evermore, they would ring in her ears; always, for evermore, they would burn deeper and deeper into her soul.
"There," she whispered; "that's over and well over!" The next minute she frowned vexedly. She had missed her glove. "Never mind! I sha'n't go back in there for it now, anyway," she decided. In the living-room, five minutes later, Alice Greggory found only a hastily scrawled note waiting for her.
Billy, when the dismal thing had dragged its way through the final note, sat "down front," crying softly in the semi-darkness while she was waiting for Alice Greggory to "run it through just once more" with a pair of tired-faced, fluffy-skirted fairies who could not learn that a duet meant a duet not two solos, independently hurried or retarded as one's fancy for the moment dictated.
"Thank you," she said with crisp coldness; "but, distasteful as darns and patches are to us, we prefer them, infinitely, to charity!" "Oh, but, please, I didn't mean you didn't understand," faltered Billy. For answer Alice Greggory walked deliberately to the door and held it open. "Oh, Alice, my dear," pleaded Mrs. Greggory again, feebly. "Come, Billy!
Where's my dinner? Of course I don't mean to scold, Billy, but there is a limit to even my patience and it's reached now. I can't help suggesting that if you would tend to your husband and your home a little more, and go gallivanting off with Calderwell and Arkwright and Alice Greggory a little less, that Where is Eliza, anyway?" he finished irritably, switching on the lights with a snap.
"Oh, good morning, Uncle William," she called, in answer to the masculine voice that replied to her "Hullo." "Billy, are you very busy this morning?" "No, indeed not if you want me." "Well, I do, my dear." Uncle William's voice was troubled. "I want you to go with me, if you can, to see a Mrs. Greggory. She's got a teapot I want. It's a genuine Lowestoft, Harlow says. Will you go?"
After all, it had been the great good and pleasure which the visit would bring to Mrs. Greggory that had been the final straw to tip the scales. On the eleventh of February, therefore, in the company of the once scorned "Peggy and Mary Jane," Alice Greggory and her mother had arrived at Hillside.
Word Of The Day