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 attitude 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 passed 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 reassuringly, 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.