Arkwright was due at ten o'clock--Billy had specially asked him to come at that hour.

He would not know, of course, that Alice Greggory was in the house; but soon after his arrival Billy meant to excuse herself for a moment, slip up-stairs and send Alice Greggory down for a book, a pair of scissors, a shawl for Aunt Hannah--anything would do for a pretext, anything so that the girl might walk into the living-room and find Arkwright waiting for her alone.
And then--What happened next was, in Billy's mind, very vague, but very attractive as a nucleus for one's thoughts, nevertheless.
All this was, indeed, a fine plan; but--( If only fine plans would not so often have a "but"!) In Billy's case the "but" had to do with things so apparently unrelated as were Aunt Hannah's clock and a negro's coal wagon.

The clock struck eleven at half-past ten, and the wagon dumped itself to destruction directly in front of a trolley car in which sat Mr.M.J.Arkwright, hurrying to keep his appointment with Miss Billy Neilson.

It was almost half-past ten when Arkwright finally rang the bell at Hillside.

Billy greeted him so eagerly, and at the same time with such evident disappointment at his late arrival, that Arkwright's heart sang with joy.
"But there's a rehearsal at quarter of eleven," exclaimed Billy, in answer to his hurried explanation of the delay; "and this gives so little time for--for--so little time, you know," she finished in confusion, casting frantically about in her mind for an excuse to hurry up-stairs and send Alice Greggory down before it should be quite too late.
No wonder that Arkwright, noting the sparkle in her eye, the agitation in her manner, and the embarrassed red in her cheek, took new courage.
For so long had this girl held him at the end of a major third or a diminished seventh; for so long had she blithely accepted his every word and act as devotion to music, not herself--for so long had she done all this that he had come to fear that never would she do anything else.