Chapter 7: Old Friends and New

At ten minutes before six on the afternoon of Arkwright’s arrival, Billy came into the living-room to welcome the three Henshaw brothers, who, as was frequently the case, were dining at Hillside.

Bertram thought Billy had never looked prettier than she did this afternoon with the bronze sheen of her pretty house gown bringing out the bronze lights in her dark eyes and in the soft waves of her beautiful hair. Her countenance, too, carried a peculiar something that the artist’s eye was quick to detect, and that the artist’s fingers tingled to put on canvas.

“Jove! Billy,” he said low in her ear, as he greeted her, “I wish I had a brush in my hand this minute. I’d have a ‘Face of a Girl’ that would be worth while!”

Billy laughed and dimpled her appreciation; but down in her heart she was conscious of a vague unrest. Billy wished, sometimes, that she did not so often seem to Bertram—a picture.

She turned to Cyril with outstretched hand.

“Oh, yes, Marie’s coming,” she smiled in answer to the quick shifting of Cyril’s eyes to the hall doorway. “And Aunt Hannah, too. They’re up-stairs.”

“And Mary Jane?” demanded William, a little anxiously

“Will’s getting nervous,” volunteered Bertram, airily. “He wants to see Mary Jane. You see we’ve told him that we shall expect him to see that she doesn’t bother us four too much, you know. He’s expected always to remove her quietly but effectually, whenever he sees that she is likely to interrupt a tête-á-tête. Naturally, then, Will wants to see Mary Jane.”

Billy began to laugh hysterically. She dropped into a chair and raised both her hands, palms outward.

“Don’t, don’t—please don’t!” she choked, “or I shall die. I’ve had all I can stand, already.”

“All you can stand?”

“What do you mean?”

“Is she so—impossible?” This last was from Bertram, spoken softly, and with a hurried glance toward the hall.

Billy dropped her hands and lifted her head. By heroic effort she pulled her face into sobriety—all but her eyes—and announced:

“Mary Jane is—a man.”

“Wha-at?”

“A man!”

“Billy!”

Three masculine forms sat suddenly erect.

“Yes. Oh, Uncle William, I know now just how you felt—I know, I know,” gurgled Billy, incoherently. “There he stood with his pink just as I did—only he had a brown beard, and he didn’t have Spunk—and I had to telephone to prepare folks, just as you did. And the room—the room! I fixed the room, too,” she babbled breathlessly, “only I had curling tongs and hair pins in it instead of guns and spiders!”

“Child, child! what are you talking about?” William’s face was red.

“A man!—Mary Jane!” Cyril was merely cross.

“Billy, what does this mean?” Bertram had grown a little white.

Billy began to laugh again, yet she was plainly trying to control herself.