HE wants a wife that
is beautiful and clever, that can do things like himself--LIKE HIMSELF!"
she iterated feverishly.
Billy opened wide her eyes.
"Why, Marie, one would think--you already knew--such a man," she cried.
The little music teacher changed her position, and turned her eyes away.
"I do, of course," she retorted in a merry voice, "lots of them. Don't
you? Come, we've discussed my matrimonial prospects quite long enough,"
she went on lightly. "You know we started with yours. Suppose we go back
to those."
"But I haven't any," demurred Billy, as she turned with a smile to greet
Aunt Hannah, who had just entered the room. "I'm not going to marry; am
I, Aunt Hannah?"
"Er--what? Marry? My grief and conscience, what a question, Billy!
Of course you're going to marry--when the time comes!" exclaimed Aunt
Hannah.
Billy laughed and shook her head vigorously. But even as she opened
her lips to reply, Rosa appeared and announced that Mr. Calderwell was
waiting down-stairs. Billy was angry then, for after the maid was gone,
the merriment in Aunt Hannah's laugh only matched that in Marie's--and
the intonation was unmistakable.
"Well, I'm not!" declared Billy with pink cheeks and much indignation,
as she left the room. And as if to convince herself, Marie, Aunt Hannah,
and all the world that such was the case, she refused Calderwell so
decidedly that night when he, for the half-dozenth time, laid his hand
and heart at her feet, that even Calderwell himself was convinced--so
far as his own case was concerned--and left town the next day.
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