THE DINNER BILLY GOT
At five minutes of six Bertram and Calderwell came. Bertram gave his peculiar ring and let himself in with his latchkey; but Billy did not meet him in the hall, nor in the drawing-room.
Excusing himself, Bertram hurried up-stairs.
Billy was not in her room, nor anywhere on that floor. She was not in William's room. Coming down-stairs to the hall again, Bertram confronted William, who had just come in.
``Where's Billy?'' demanded the young husband, with just a touch of irritation, as if he suspected William of having Billy in his pocket.
William stared slightly.
``Why, I don't know. Isn't she here?''
``I'll ask Pete,'' frowned Bertram.
In the dining-room Bertram found no one, though the table was prettily set, and showed half a grapefruit at each place. In the kitchen --in the kitchen Bertram found a din of rattling tin, an odor of burned food--, a confusion of scattered pots and pans, a frightened cat who peered at him from under a littered stove, and a flushed, disheveled young woman in a blue dust-cap and ruffled apron, whom he finally recognized as his wife.
``Why, Billy!'' he gasped.
Billy, who was struggling with something at the sink, turned sharply.
``Bertram Henshaw,'' she panted, ``I used to think you were wonderful because you could paint a picture. I even used to think I was a little wonderful because I could write a song.
Well, I don't any more! But I'll tell you who _is_wonderful. It's Eliza and Rosa, and all the rest of those women who can get a meal on to the table all at once, so it's fit to eat!''
``Why, Billy!'' gasped Bertram again, falling back to the door he had closed behind him.
``What in the world does this mean?''
``Mean? It means I'm getting dinner,'' choked Billy. ``Can't you see?''
``But--Pete! Eliza!''
``They're sick--I mean he's sick; and I said I'd do it. I'd be an oak. But how did I know there wasn't anything in the house except stuff that took hours to cook--only potatoes? And how did I know that _they_ cooked in no time, and then got all smushy and wet staying in the water?
And how did I know that everything else would stick on and burn on till you'd used every dish there was in the house to cook 'em in?''
``Why, Billy!'' gasped Bertram, for the third time. And then, because he had been married only six months instead of six years, he made the mistake of trying to argue with a woman whose nerves were already at the snapping point.
``But, dear, it was so foolish of you to do all this!
Why didn't you telephone? Why didn't you get somebody?''
Like an irate little tigress, Billy turned at bay.
``Bertram Henshaw,'' she flamed angrily, ``if you don't go up-stairs and tend to that man up there, I shall _scream_. Now go! I'll be up when Ican.''
And Bertram went.
It was not so very long, after all, before Billy came in to greet her guest. She was not stately and imposing in royally sumptuous blue velvet and ermine; nor yet was she cozy and homy in bronze-gold cr<e^>pe de Chine and swan's-down.
