"It was wonderful of you to say that to me," he said. "I shall never forget it!"

"It's my DREAM!" Miss Pratt exclaimed, again, with the same enthusiasm.

"It's my DREAM."

"You would make a glorious actress!" he said.

At that her mood changed. She laughed a laugh like a sweet little girl's laugh (not Jane's) and, setting her rocking-chair in motion, cuddled the fuzzy white doglet in her arms. "Ickle boy Baxter t'yin' flatterbox us, tunnin' Flopit! No'ty, no'ty flatterbox!"

"No, no!" William insisted, earnestly. "I mean it. But--but--"

"But whatc.u.ms?"

"What do you think about actors and actresses making love to each other on the stage? Do you think they have to really feel it, or do they just pretend?"

"Well," said Miss Pratt, weightily, "sometimes one way, sometimes the other."

William's gravity became more and more profound. "Yes, but how can they pretend like that? Don't you think love is a sacred thing, Cousin Lola?"

Fict.i.tious sisterships, brotherships, and cousinships are devices to push things along, well known to seventeen and even more advanced ages.

On the wonderful evening of their first meeting William and Miss Pratt had cozily arranged to be called, respectively, "Ickle boy Baxter" and "Cousin Lola." (Thus they had broken down the tedious formalities of their first twenty minutes together.)

"Don't you think love is sacred?" he repeated in the deepest tone of which his vocal cords were capable.

"Ess," said Miss Pratt.

"_I_ do!" William was emphatic. "I think love is the most sacred thing there is. I don't mean SOME kinds of love. I mean REAL love. You take some people, I don't believe they ever know what real love means. They TALK about it, maybe, but they don't understand it. Love is something n.o.body can understand unless they feel it and and if they don't understand it they don't feel it. Don't YOU think so?"

"Ess."

"Love," William continued, his voice lifting and thrilling to the great theme--"love is something n.o.body can ever have but one time in their lives, and if they don't have it then, why prob'ly they never will.

Now, if a man REALLY loves a girl, why he'd do anything in the world she wanted him to. Don't YOU think so?"

"Ess, 'deedums!" said the silvery voice.

"But if he didn't, then he wouldn't," said William vehemently. "But when a man really loves a girl he will. Now, you take a man like that and he can generally do just about anything the girl he loves wants him to. Say, f'rinstance, she wants him to love her even more than he does already--or almost anything like that--and supposin' she asks him to.

Well, he would go ahead and do it. If they really loved each other he would!"

He paused a moment, then in a lowered tone he said, "I think REAL love is sacred, don't you?"

"Ess."

"Don't you think love is the most sacred thing there is--that is, if it's REAL love?"

"Ess."

"_I_ do," said William, warmly. "I--I'm glad you feel like that, because I think real love is the kind n.o.body could have but just once in their lives, but if it isn't REAL love, why--why most people never have it at all, because--" He paused, seeming to seek for the exact phrase which would express his meaning. "--Because the REAL love a man feels for a girl and a girl for a man, if they REALLY love each other, and, you look at a case like that, of course they would BOTH love each other, or it wouldn't be real love well, what _I_ say is, if it's REAL love, well, it's--it's sacred, because I think that kind of love is always sacred.

Don't you think love is sacred if it's the real thing?"

"Ess," said Miss Pratt. "Do Flopit again. Be Flopit!"

"Berp-werp! Berp-werp-werp."

And within the library an agonized man writhed and muttered:

"WORD! WORD! WORD--"

This hoa.r.s.e repet.i.tion had become almost continuous.

... But out on the porch, that little, jasmine-scented bower in Arcady where youth cried to youth and golden heads were haloed in the moonshine, there fell a silence. Not utter silence, for out there an ethereal music sounded constantly, unheard and forgotten by older ears.

Time was when the sly playwrights used "incidental music" in their dramas; they knew that an audience would be moved so long as the music played; credulous while that crafty enchantment lasted. And when the galled Mr. Parcher wondered how those young people out on the porch could listen to each other and not die, it was because he did not hear and had forgotten the music that throbs in the veins of youth.

Nevertheless, it may not be denied that despite his poor memory this man of fifty was deserving of a little sympathy.

It was William who broke the silence. "How--" he began, and his voice trembled a little. "How--how do you--how do you think of me when I'm not with you?"

"Think nice-c.u.ms," Miss Pratt responded. "Flopit an' me think nice-c.u.ms."

"No," said William; "I mean what name do you have for me when you're when you're thinking about me?"

Miss Pratt seemed to be puzzled, perhaps justifiably, and she made a cooing sound of interrogation.

"I mean like this," William explained. "F'rinstance, when you first came, I always thought of you as 'Milady'--when I wrote that poem, you know."

"Ess. Boo'fums."

"But now I don't," he said. "Now I think of you by another name when I'm alone. It--it just sort of came to me. I was kind of just sitting around this afternoon, and I didn't know I was thinking about anything at all very much, and then all of a sudden I said it to myself out loud. It was about as strange a thing as I ever knew of. Don't YOU think so?"

"Ess. It uz dest WEIRD!" she answered. "What ARE dat pitty names?"

"I called you," said William, huskily and reverently, "I called you 'My Baby-Talk Lady.'"

BANG!

They were startled by a crash from within the library; a heavy weight seemed to have fallen (or to have been hurled) a considerable distance.

Stepping to the window, William beheld a large volume lying in a distorted att.i.tude at the foot of the wall opposite to that in which the reading-lamp was a fixture. But of all human life the room was empty; for Mr. Parcher had given up, and was now hastening to his bed in the last faint hope of saving his reason.

His symptoms, however, all pointed to its having fled; and his wife, looking up from some computations in laundry charges, had but a vision of windmill gestures as he pa.s.sed the door of her room. Then, not only for her, but for the inoffensive people who lived in the other half of the house, the closing of his own door took place in a really memorable manner.

William, gazing upon the fallen Plutarch, had just offered the explanation, "Somebody must 'a' thrown it at a bug or something, I guess," when the second explosion sent its reverberations through the house.

"My doodness!" Miss Pratt exclaimed, jumping up.

William laughed rea.s.suringly, remaining calm. "It's only a door blew shut up-stairs," he said "Let's sit down again--just the way we were?"

Unfortunately for him, Mr. Joe Bullitt now made his appearance at the other end of the porch. Mr. Bullitt, though almost a year younger than either William or Johnnie Watson, was of a turbulent and masterful disposition. Moreover, in regard to Miss Pratt, his affections were in as ardent a state as those of his rivals, and he lacked Johnnie's meekness. He firmly declined to be shunted by Miss Parcher, who was trying to favor William's cause, according to a promise he had won of her by strong pleading. Regardless of her efforts, Mr. Bullitt descended upon William and his Baby-Talk-Lady, and received from the latter a honeyed greeting, somewhat to the former's astonishment and not at all to his pleasure.

"Oh, goody-cute!" cried Miss Pratt. "Here's big Bruvva Josie-Joe!" And she lifted her little dog close to Mr. Bullitt's face, guiding one of Flopit's paws with her fingers. "Stroke big Bruvva Josie-Joe's pint teeks, darlin' Flopit." (Josie-Joe's pink cheeks were indicated by the expression "pint teeks," evidently, for her accompanying action was to pa.s.s Flopit's paw lightly over those glowing surfaces.) "'At's nice!"

she remarked. "Stroke him gently, p'eshus Flopit, an' nen we'll coax him to make pitty singin' for us, like us did yestiday."