Alpha Book

"I don't know, Billy; ask her; perhaps she knows."
Eileen laughed, too, delicately embarrassed and aware of his teasing
smile. But Drina, always impressed by formality, said: "Uncle Philip
isn't Eileen's uncle. People who are not relations say _Miss and Mrs_."
"Are faver and muvver relations?" asked Josephine timidly.
"Y-es--no!--I don't know," admitted Drina; "_are_ they, Eileen?"
"Why, yes--that is--that is to say--" And turning to Selwyn: "What
dreadful questions. _Are_ they relations, Captain Selwyn? Of course they
are!"
"They were not before they were married," he said, laughing.
"If you married Eileen," began Billy, "you'd call her Eileen, I
suppose."
"Certainly," said Selwyn.
"Why don't you?"
"That is another thing you must ask her, my son."
"Well, then, Eileen--"
But Miss Erroll was already seated at the nursery piano, and his demands
were drowned in a decisive chord which brought the children clustering
around her, while their nurses ran among them untying bibs and scrubbing
faces and fingers in fresh water.


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