“What kind of practice?” Theodora asked, as the carriage stopped at the steps.

“Piano.  I play a good deal.  Oh, what a dear place this is!  Am I going to live here?” And she ran lightly up the steps, too eager to hear Billy’s despairing,—­

“Ted!  Five hours of strumming, every day!  What will you do?”

Or Theodora’s laughing reply,—­

“I can forgive that, Billy; but it is still rankling within me that we are no longer young.  Alas for our vanished youth!”

“Alas for the frankness of childhood, you’d better say,” Billy responded.

Inside the broad hall, Cicely walked up to the blazing fire and rested one slim foot on the fender for a moment.  Then she bent down and carefully unrolled the cape.  The tag end of grey fur stirred itself; there was a little growl, a little bark, and a little grey dog squirmed out of his nest and went waddling away across the rug.

“Mercy on us!  What’s that?” Theodora gasped, as the little creature shook himself with a vehemence which fairly hoisted him off his hind legs, then flew at the nearest claw of the tiger skin and fell to worrying it.

“That?” Cicely’s tone was tinged with a pride almost maternal.  “That’s Billy.  He is a thoroughbred Yorkshire.  Isn’t he a dear?”

CHAPTER SIX

“Do you know where Billy is?” Theodora asked, coming into the library, one evening.

Cicely glanced up from her book.

“He was here, just a few minutes ago.”

“Patrick wants him.”

“Who?”

“Patrick.”

Cicely looked surprised and closed her book.

“What does Patrick want of him, Cousin Theodora?”

“Why, really, Cicely, he didn’t tell me.  Did you say he was here just now?”

“Yes, the last I saw of him, he was asleep under the piano.”

“Cicely!  Oh, you mean the dog.”

“Yes.  Don’t you?”

“No; I meant my husband.”

“Oh, I haven’t seen him since dinner.”  And Cicely tranquilly returned to her book, while Theodora departed in search of Mr. Farrington.

“Cicely,” she said, when she came back again; “I am sorry; but I am afraid Billy’s name will have to be changed.”

“Which?” Cicely inquired, as her dimples showed themselves.

“Yours.  Mine is the older and has first right to the name.  Do you mind, dear?  It is horribly confusing and it startles me a little to hear that my husband is asleep under the piano.”

The girl laughed, while she tossed her book on the table.

“As startling as it was to me, this noon, when you said my dog was putting on his overcoat in the front hall.  It doesn’t seem to work well, this duplicating names.  What shall we call him,—­the puppy, I mean?”

“Melchisedek, without beginning and without end, because his tail and ears are docked,” came from the corner.