ill Pete and Eliza go away again, and Bertram
brings home a friend to dinner. That'll tell the tale. I think now I
could have something besides potato-mush and burned corn--but maybe I
wouldn't, when the time came. If only I could buy everything I needed to
cook with, I'd be all right. But I can't, I find."

"Can't buy what you need! What do you mean?"

Billy laughed ruefully.

"Well, every other question I ask Eliza, she says: 'Why, I don't know;
you have to use your judgment.' Just as if I had any judgment about how
much salt to use, or what dish to take! Dear me, Aunt Hannah, the man
that will grow judgment and can it as you would a mess of peas, has got
his fortune made!"

"What an absurd child you are, Billy," laughed Aunt Hannah. "I used to
tell Marie--By the way, how is Marie? Have you seen her lately?"

"Oh, yes, I saw her yesterday," twinkled Billy. "She had a book of
wall-paper samples spread over the back of a chair, two bunches of
samples of different colored damasks on the table before her, a 'Young
Mother's Guide' propped open in another chair, and a pair of baby's
socks in her lap with a roll each of pink, and white, and blue ribbon.
She spent most of the time, after I had helped her choose the ribbon, in
asking me if I thought she ought to let the baby cry and bother Cyril,
or stop its crying and hurt the baby, because her 'Mother's Guide' says
a certain amount of crying is needed to develop a baby's lungs."

Aunt Hannah laughed, but she frowned, too.

"The idea! I guess Cyril can stand proper crying--and laughing,
too--from his own child!" she said then, crisply.

"Oh, but Marie is afraid he can't," smiled Billy. "And that's the
trouble. She says that's the only thing that worries her--Cyril."

"Nonsense!" ejaculated Aunt Hannah.

"Oh, but it isn't nonsense to Marie," retorted Billy. "You should see
the preparations she's made and the precautions she's taken. Actually,
when I saw those baby's socks in her lap, I didn't know but she was
going to put rubber heels on them! They've built the new house with
deadening felt in all the walls, and Marie's planned the nursery and
Cyril's den at opposite ends of the house; and she says she shall keep
the baby there _all_ the time--the nursery, I mean, not the den. She
says she's going to teach it to be a quiet baby and hate noise. She says
she thinks she can do it, too."

"Humph!" sniffed Aunt Hannah, scornfully.

"You should have seen Marie's disgus