“The iceberg, Billy, every time,” I said at last.  I just can’t manage whales, especially if they are ardent, which word means intense.  I like icebergs, or I think I should if I could catch one.”

“I don’t believe you could, Molly, but maybe father will let you put a rope and a long hook in his trunk to try with, if your clothes go into mine.  His is a heap the biggest anyway, and Nurse Tilly said he ought to put my things in his, but I cried, and then he went upstairs and got out that little one for me.  Come and see ’em.”

“What do you mean, Billy?” I asked, while a sudden fear shot all over me like lightning.  “You’re just playing go-away, aren’t you?”

“No, I’m not playing, Molly!” he exclaimed excitedly.  “Me and you and father is going across the ocean for a long, long time away from here.  Father ast me about it this morning, and I told him all right, and you could come with us if you was good.  He said couldn’t I go without you if you was busy and couldn’t come, and I told him you would put things down and come if I said so.  Won’t you, Molly?  It won’t be no fun without you, and you’d cry all by yourself with me gone.”  His little face was all drawn up with anxiety and sympathy at my lonely estate with him out of it, and a cry rose up from my heart with a kind of primitive savagery at what I felt was coming down upon me.

Without waiting to take him with me, or think, or do anything but feel deadly savage anger, I hurried across the garden and into Dr. Moore’s surgery, where he was just taking off his gloves and dust-coat.

“What do you mean, John Moore, by daring, daring to think you can go and take Billy away from me?” I demanded, looking at him with what must have been such fear and madness in my face that he was startled as he came close to the table against which I leaned.  His face had grown white and quiet at my attack, and he waited to answer for a long horrible minute that pulled me apart like one of those inquisition machines they used to torture women with when they didn’t know any better modern way to do it.

“I didn’t know Bill would tell you so soon, Mrs. Molly,” he said at last gently, looking past me out of the window into the garden.  “I was coming over just as soon as I got back from this call to talk with you about it, even if it did seem to intrude Bill’s and my affairs into a day that—­that ought to be all yours to be—­be happy in.  But Bill, you see, is no respecter of—­of other people’s happy days if he wants them in his.”

“Billy’s happy days are mine and mine are his, and he has the heart not to leave me out even if you would have him!” I exclaimed, a sob gathering in my heart at the thought that my little lover hadn’t even taken in a situation that would separate him from me across an ocean.

“Bill is too young to understand when he is—­is being bereaved, Molly,” he said, and still he didn’t look at me.  “I have been appointed a delegate to attend the Centennial Congress in Paris the middle of next month—­and somehow I—­feel a bit run down lately and I thought I would take the little chap and—­have—­have a Wanderjahr.  You won’t need him now, Mrs. Molly, and I couldn’t go without him, could I?” The sadness in his voice would have killed me if I hadn’t let it madden me instead.