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"I certainly should not have made it had I not had Mrs. Greggory's assurance that she wished to sell the teapot." Alice Greggory turned as if stung. "Wished to sell!" She repeated the words with superb disdain. She was plainly very angry. Her blue-gray eyes gleamed with scorn, and her whole face was suffused with a red that had swept to the roots of her soft hair.
Greggory if ever the opportunity offered. Great was her joy, therefore, when, a day or two after the Greggorys arrived at the house, Mrs. Greggory's chance reference to Arkwright and her daughter gave Billy the opportunity she sought. "They used to know each other long ago, Mr. Arkwright tells me," Billy began warily. "Yes."
Billy joined in the laugh that greeted this sally, but Arkwright noticed that she tried to change the subject from her own affairs to a discussion of the new song on Alice Greggory's piano. Calderwell, however, was not to be silenced.
As she had hoped, Alice Greggory's eyes, after they had glanced half-way through the first page, sought the name at the left side below the title. "'Words by M. J. " there was a visible start, and a pause before the "'Arkwright'" was uttered in a slightly different tone. Billy noted both the start and the pause and gloried in them.
The profits are to go to the Home for Crippled Children, you know," she explained, turning to Arkwright, "and we decided to hire only the accompanist." An odd expression flitted across Miss Greggory's face. "Mr. Arkwright used to sing tenor," she observed quietly. "As if he didn't now a perfectly glorious tenor," retorted Billy. "But as if he would take this!"
I should say they were," cried the man. "They are, then valuable?" Mrs. Greggory's voice shook. "Indeed they are! But you must know that." "I have been told so. Yet to me their chief value, of course, lies in their association. My mother and my grandmother owned that teapot, sir." Again her voice broke. William Henshaw cleared his throat.
"Oh, of course Kate knows that; but she says it seems as if Billy needn't have gone out and gathered in the lame and the halt and the blind." "Nonsense!" cried Marie, with unusual sharpness for her. "I suppose she said that just because of Mrs. Greggory's and Tommy Dunn's crutches."
Billy knew by the way the man spoke that, for some reason, he did not wish to prolong the subject of his meeting the Greggorys. She made a quick shift, therefore, to another phase of the matter. "But tell me, please, before you go, how did those rumors come out about Judge Greggory's honesty, I mean?" "Why, I never knew, exactly," frowned Arkwright, musingly.
There was a moment's silence; then, a little harshly, the man said: "Perhaps because I wanted to be more than a friend is why you're not satisfied with my interest now." A look that was almost terror came to Alice Greggory's eyes. She flushed painfully, then grew very white. "You mean " "Yes," he nodded dully, without looking up. "I cared too much for her.
Billy did not know whether she herself were the more distressed or the more relieved to hear him stammer: "We er I came from Harlow, Mrs. Greggory. He gave me to understand you had an er teapot that er " With his eyes on the cracked white crockery pitcher on the table, William Henshaw came to a helpless pause. A curious expression, or rather, series of expressions crossed Mrs. Greggory's face.
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