"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?"