“No; it will be good for us, Billy.  We are getting too staid, and we need some child-life in the house.  We can try the experiment, anyway; and it will be easy enough to pack her off to school, after we have grown tired of her.  Will you write, to-night?”

“If you are sure you think best.”

“I do; and perhaps I’d better put a note into your letter.  It may make Harry feel easier about leaving the child with strangers.  He will find it hard enough, anyway.”

She crossed the room to her desk, to write the letter which was to bring new courage to the anxious, exiled invalid.  Suddenly she turned around, with her pen in mid air.

“Billy, the hand of fate is in this.  The girl may be just what Allyn needs.”

“Ye—­es; only it is within the limits of possibility that they may fight.”

“Then they will have to make up again, living in such close quarters as this.  Besides, that kind of fighting isn’t altogether unhealthful.  I believe the whole matter is foreordained for Allyn’s good.”

“It is an optimistic view of the case that wouldn’t have occurred to me, Ted.  Still, we’ll hope for the best.”

Valiantly she took his advice and hoped for the best, while she busied herself about the details of receiving her new charge.  March was already some days old, and it had been decided that Cicely should arrive on the twentieth, so the time was short.  In the midst of her domestic duties, Theodora found time for some hours of writing, each day, for she had a well-founded fear lest the new arrival might be of little help to the cause of light literature.  In the intervals, she and Billy discussed the invasion of their hearthstone from every possible point of view; but as a rule the ridiculous side of the situation prevailed and they had moments of wild hilarity over the coming demands on their dignity.

“Uncle William!” Theodora observed, one day.  “It suggests a scarlet bandanna and an ivory-headed cane.  She will probably embroider you some purple slippers next Christmas too.”

“No matter, so long as she doesn’t undertake to choose my neckties.  Never mind, Ted; the uncertainty will soon be over.  She comes, to-morrow.”

“I wonder what she really is like,” Theodora said slowly.  “Paternal testimony doesn’t count for much, and I am beginning to be a little alarmed at what I may have undertaken. Independent and not too badly spoiled are not reassuring phrases, Billy.”

“Her mother was as staid as a church, and Harry is sobriety itself, so the girl can’t have inherited much original sin from either of them.  Independent from Harry’s point of view doesn’t mean the same thing that it would from yours.  She probably is a mild-mannered little product of the times.”

“I don’t know just what I do want,” Theodora sighed.  “One minute, I hope she will be a modest violet; the next, I am in terror lest she be too insipid.  What are girls of that age like, Billy?  It is years since I have known any of them.  Just now, I am in doubt whether I may not shock her even more than she will shock me.  The modern girl is a staid and decorous creature, I suspect; not such a tomboy as I was.”