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Updated: June 13, 2025
Calderwell laughed quietly. "No; I don't think any one would take you for a nursery governess, Arkwright, in spite of the fact that you are still known to some of your friends as 'Mary Jane. But you can sing a song, man, which will promptly give you a through ticket to their innermost sacred circle.
It was in April, three years since Billy's first appearance in the Beacon Street house, that Bertram met his friend, Hugh Calderwell, on the street one afternoon, and brought him home to dinner. Hugh Calderwell was a youth who, Bertram said, had been born with a whole dozen silver spoons in his mouth. And, indeed, it would seem so, if present prosperity were any indication.
It was to be Alice and Calderwell, not Alice and Arkwright. Arkwright was again to be disappointed in his dearest hopes. Telling herself indignantly that it could not be, it should not be, Billy determined to remain after the men had gone, and speak to Alice. Just what she would say she did not know. Even what she could say, she was not sure.
As for her 'Aunt Hannah' they all make a pet of her; but that is, perhaps, because Billy herself is so devoted." Again William frowned at the familiar "Billy"; but Calderwell talked on unheeding. "After all, I'm not sure but some of us regard 'Aunt Hannah' with scant favor, occasionally," he laughed; "something as if she were the dragon that guarded the princess, you know.
I have a little nocturne that I was playing to Mr. Calderwell last night." "Oh, to Calderwell!" Arkwright had stiffened perceptibly. "Yes. He didn't like it. I'll play it to you and see what you say," she smiled, seating herself at the piano. "Well, if he had liked it, it's safe to say I shouldn't," shrugged Arkwright. "Nonsense!" laughed the girl, beginning to appear more like her natural self.
I think I was really convinced, for a while, that that she didn't want that apple pie," he finished with a whimsical lightness that did not quite coincide with the stern lines that had come to his mouth. For a moment there was silence, then Calderwell spoke again. "Where did you know Miss Billy?" "Oh, I don't know her at all. I know of her through Aunt Hannah." Calderwell sat suddenly erect.
"Like? Why, she's like like herself, of course. You'll have to know Alice. She's the salt of the earth Alice is," smiled Arkwright, rising to his feet with a remonstrative gesture, as he saw Calderwell pick up his coat. "What's your hurry?" "Hm-m," commented Calderwell again, ignoring the question.
At nine o'clock an anxious Eliza and a remorseful, apologetic Pete came home and descended to the horror the once orderly kitchen and dining-room had become. At ten, Calderwell, with very evident reluctance, tore himself away from Billy's gay badinage, and said good night.
That was my 'matter of course, you see," he went on bitterly. "I knew you were Mr. William Henshaw's namesake, and Calderwell had told me the story of your coming to them when you were left alone in the world. Calderwell had said, too, that " Arkwright paused, then hurried on a little constrainedly "well, he said something that led me to think Mr. Bertram Henshaw was not a marrying man, anyway."
"Poor Billy!" chuckled Calderwell. "I'd have gone down into the kitchen myself if I'd suspected what was going on." Arkwright raised his eyebrows. "Perhaps it's well you didn't if Bertram's picture of what he found there when he went down is a true one. Mrs. Henshaw acknowledges that even the cat sought refuge under the stove."
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