"There are others, Babe."

"What do you mean?"

"This. Listen! Oh, where is the thing? Here it is, in the Bannock correspondence of the _Times_. Listen! 'Mr. G. Bartlett, the musician who is sojourning at Mr. Jas. Sykes's farm, sustained a bad fall from his bicycle on Bannock Hill, last Tuesday. His injuries are serious, including a cut on his temple and a compound fracture of the right arm.

Dr. Starr reduced the fracture and reports the patient as doing as well as--' you see somebody else slipped up on that hill, Babe. You ought to feel you came out of it pretty well."

Phebe looked up with a frown.

"Go away, Allyn; I'm busy," she said sharply.

Three weeks later, Phebe had occasion to make another trip to see Mrs.

Richardson. This time, she chose the hill road, the one which led past the Sykes farm. Gifford Barrett was sauntering along by the roadside, smoking. His arm was in a sling, his hat drawn forward, half concealing the patch of plaster on his temple. As she pa.s.sed, Phebe looked him full in the face, and instinctively his hand went to his cap, though without any sign of recognition.

"Some girl that's heard the overture," he said to himself. "I don't seem to remember her, though. She has a good figure and she rides well; but what a color! She will have apoplexy, some day, if she's not careful."

The next day, Eulaly Sykes's boarder had started for the Maine coast where three unmusical, but sympathetic maidens were waiting to help him pa.s.s the dreary days of his convalescence.

CHAPTER NINE

Two willow chairs were swaying to and fro in the gathering dusk, and two voices were blended in a low murmur. Theodora and Billy were exchanging the confidences born of a long week of separation while business had called Mr. Farrington to New York.

"How comes on the book, Ted?"

She shook her head.

"It doesn't come."

"Does Cicely's being here disturb you?"

"No, not really; not nearly so much as Melchisedek. In an unguarded moment, I asked him, one day, to come and help auntie write books. Since then he rushes from his breakfast straight to my room and capers madly on the threshold till I appear."

"And then?"

"Then he insists on lying in my lap and resting his head on my arm, and he snarls, every time I joggle him. It isn't helpful or inspiring, Billy."

"No; I should say not. What is the story, Ted?"

"I'm not going to tell even you, Billy," she returned quickly. "It always demoralizes me to talk over my stories while they are evolving. I must work them out alone. It seems conceited and selfish; but there's no help for it. You believe it; don't you?"

"I'll trust you, Ted. But is this hero very hectic?"

It was an old joke, but they were still laughing over it when Cicely appeared in the doorway, with Melchisedek under her arm.

"Cousin Theodora?" she said interrogatively, for the piazza was dark.

"Yes."

"I want to talk."

"You generally do, Cis," Billy observed unkindly.

"Yes; but I mean I have something to talk about. I don't always."

"Shall I go away?" he asked politely.

"No; I want a man's view of it, too. But perhaps you were busy and I'll be in the way."

For her reply, Theodora drew another chair into the group. Cicely sat down, balanced Melchisedek on her knee and fell to poking his grey hair this way and that, as if at a loss how to begin the conversation.

"How far is it safe for a girl to follow up a boy?" she asked abruptly, yet with a little catch in her breath.

"Meaning yourself?" Billy queried.

"Yes, of course."

"I should say it depended a good deal on the boy."

"I mean Allyn."

"What's the matter? Have you had a falling out?"

"Yes, we are always doing it. I can't seem to help it, either. It's horrid. He is outspoken and tells me what he thinks of me; I'm peppery, and I don't like it."

"I know, dear," Theodora said gently, for she read the girl's irritation in her voice. "Allyn isn't always as polite as he might be; but we must try not to be too sensitive."

"I'm not sensitive," Cicely said forlornly. "I like him, though, and I want him to like me, and it hurts my feelings when he doesn't."

"How long has the present feud lasted?" Billy inquired.

"Almost ten days. It's the worst one yet, and it started from nothing. I know he is your brother, Cousin Theodora; but--I really don't think it's all my fault."

"No." Theodora's voice suggested no mental reservation. "I know how it is, Cicely. Allyn has been my baby and my boy; but, much as I love him, I can't help seeing that he is cantankerous and cross-grained at times. But it is only at times, Cis; it isn't chronic."

"I wish it were. Then I shouldn't mind it so much. But when he isn't cross, he is one of the jolliest boys I have ever known. That's the worst of it, for I miss him so, when we squabble. When we are on terms, I don't care about anybody else; and so, when we are off, it leaves me all alone."

"When I squabbled with your Cousin Theodora," Billy said oracularly; "I generally felt I had done my share, and I left her to do the making up."

"So I observed," his wife answered; but Cicely was too much absorbed in her subject to heed the parenthesis.

"I'm willing to make up," she said, as she twisted Melchisedek's ears with an absent-minded fervor which caused the sufferer to whimper; "but how can I? He just goes off his way, and leaves me to go mine. I hate to tag him; besides, I don't know but he really wants to get rid of me.

Hush, Melchisedek! Don't whine. I didn't intend to hurt you. That's what I meant, Cousin Ted, when I asked you about following him up. How far is it safe to go?"

"Till you get there," Mr. Farrington replied.

"Billy!" his wife remonstrated.