nto his arms and bid him hold the child
till she comes back. But it's this way. You see, Marie must be kept
quiet, and the nursery is very near her room. It worries her terribly
when either of the children cries. Besides, the little rascals have
apparently fixed up some sort of labor-union compact with each other, so
that if one cries for something or nothing, the other promptly joins in
and helps. So the nurses have got into the habit of picking up the first
disturber of the peace, and hurrying him to quarters remote; and Cyril's
den being the most remote of all, they usually fetch up there."

"You mean--they take those babies into Cyril's den--_now_?" Even Aunt
Hannah was plainly aghast.

"Yes," twinkled Billy. "I fancy their Hygienic Immaculacies approved
of Cyril's bare floors, undraped windows, and generally knick-knackless
condition. Anyhow, they've made his den a sort of--of annex to the
nursery."

"But--but Cyril! What does he say?" stammered the dumfounded Aunt
Hannah. "Think of Cyril's standing a thing like that! Doesn't he do
anything--or say anything?"

Billy smiled, and lifted her brows quizzically.

"My dear Aunt Hannah, did you ever know _many_ people to have the
courage to 'say things' to one of those becapped, beaproned, bespotless
creatures of loftily superb superiority known as trained nurses?
Besides, you wouldn't recognize Cyril now. Nobody would. He's as meek
as Moses, and has been ever since his two young sons were laid in his
reluctant, trembling arms. He breaks into a cold sweat at nothing, and
moves about his own home as if he were a stranger and an interloper,
endured merely on sufferance in this abode of strange women and strange
babies."

"Nonsense!" scoffed Aunt Hannah.

"But it's so," maintained Billy, merrily. "Now, for instance. You know
Cyril always has been in the habit of venting his moods on the piano
(just as I do, only more so) by playing exactly as he feels. Well, as
near as I can gather, he was at his usual trick the next day after the
twins arrived; and you can imagine about what sort of music it would be,
after what he had been through the preceding forty-eight hours.

"Of course I don't know exactly what happened, but Julia--Marie's second
maid, you know--tells the story. She's been with them long enough to
know something of the way the whole household always turns on the pivot
of the master's whims; so she fully appreciated the situation. She
says she heard him begi