“Aunt Hannah, why don't I feel like Marie did? why don't I feel like everybody does in books and stories? Marie went around with such a detached, heavenly, absorbed look in her eyes, before the twins came to her home. But I don't. I don't find anything like that in my face, when I look in the glass. And I don't feel detached and absorbed and heavenly. I'm happy, of course; but I can't help thinking of the dear, dear times Bertram and I have together, just we two, and I can't seem to imagine it at all with a third person around.” “Billy! _Third person_, indeed!” “There! I knew 'twould shock you,” mourned Billy. “It shocks me. I _want_ to feel detached and heavenly and absorbed.” “But Billy, dear, think of it--calling your own baby a third person!” Billy sighed despairingly. “Yes, I know. And I suppose I might as well own up to the rest of it too. I--I'm actually afraid of babies, Aunt Hannah! Well, I am,” she reiterated, in answer to Aunt Hannah's gasp of disapproval. “I'm not used to them at all. I never had any little brothers and sisters, and I don't know how to treat babies. I--I'm always afraid they'll break, or something. I'm just as afraid of the twins as I can be. How Marie can handle them, and toss them about as she does, I don't see.” “Toss them about, indeed!” “Well, it looks that way to me,” sighed Billy. “Anyhow, I know I can never get to handle them like that--and that's no way to feel! And I'm ashamed of myself because I _can't_ be detached and heavenly and absorbed,” she added, rising to go. “Everybody always is, it seems, but just me.” “Fiddlededee, my dear!” scoffed Aunt Hannah, patting Billy's downcast face. “Wait till a year from now, and we'll see about that third-person bugaboo you're worrying about. _I'm_ not worrying now; so you'd better not!” CHAPTER XXII. A DOT AND A DIMPLE On the day Cyril Henshaw's twins were six months old, a momentous occurrence marked the date with a flaming red letter of remembrance; and it all began with a baby's smile.