``There, hear that, will you?'' triumphed the father. ``What did I tell you? That's the way he's been going on ever since I came into the room; The little rascal knows me--so soon!''
Marie clapped her fingers to her lips and turned her back suddenly, with a spasmodic little cough;but her husband, if he noticed the interruption, paid no heed.
``Dot and Dimple, indeed!'' he went on wrathfully. ``That settles it. We'll name those boys to-day, Marie, _to-day!_ Not once again will I let the sun go down on a Dot and a Dimple under my roof.''
Marie turned with a quick little cry of happiness.
``Oh, Cyril, I'm so glad! I've so wanted to have them named, you know! And shall we call them Franz and Felix, as we'd talked?''
``Franz, Felix, John, James, Paul, Charles--anything, so it's sane and sensible! I'd even adopt Calderwell's absurd Bildad and--er--Tomdad, or whatever it was, rather than have those poor little chaps insulted a day longer with a `Dot' and a `Dimple.' Great Scott!'' And, entirely forgetting what he had come to the nursery for, Cyril strode from the room.
``Ah--goo--spggggh!'' commented baby from the middle of the floor.
It was on a very windy March day that Bertram Henshaw's son, Bertram, Jr., arrived at the Strata. Billy went so far into the Valley of the Shadow of Death for her baby that it was some days before she realized in all its importance the presence of the new member of her family. Even when the days had become weeks, and Bertram, Jr., was a month and a half old, the extreme lassitude and weariness of his young mother was a source of ever-growing anxiety to her family and friends. Billy was so unlike herself, they all said.
``If something could only rouse her,''
suggested the Henshaw's old family physician one day. ``A certain sort of mental shock--if not too severe--would do the deed, I think, and with no injury--only benefit. Her physical condition is in just the state that needs a stimulus to stir it into new life and vigor.''
As it happened, this was said on a certain Monday. Two days later Bertram's sister Kate, on her way with her husband to Mr. Hartwell's old home in Vermont, stopped over in Boston for a two days' visit. She made her headquarters at Cyril's home, but very naturally she went, without much delay, to pay her respects to Bertram, Jr.
``Mr. Hartwell's brother isn't well,'' she explained to Billy, after the greetings were over.
``You know he's the only one left there, since Mother and Father Hartwell came West. We shall go right on up to Vermont in a couple of days, but we just had to stay over long enough to see the baby; and we hadn't ever seen the twins, either, you know. By the way, how perfectly ridiculous Cyril is over those boys!''
``Is he?'' smiled Billy, faintly.
``Yes. One would think there were never any babies born before, to hear him talk. He thinks they're the most wonderful things in the world--and they are cunning little fellows, I'll admit.
But Cyril thinks they _know_ so much,'' went on Kate, laughingly. ``He's always bragging of something one or the other of them has done.
Think of it--_Cyril!_ Marie says it all started from the time last January when he discovered the nurses had been calling them Dot and Dimple.''
``Yes, I know,'' smiled Billy again, faintly, lifting a thin, white, very un-Billy-like hand to her head.
Kate frowned, and regarded her sister-in-law thoughtfully.
``Mercy! how you look, Billy!'' she exclaimed, with cheerful tactlessness. ``They said you did, but, I declare, you look worse than I thought.''
Billy's pale face reddened perceptibly.
