Though he liked the familiarity, he emphatically did not like the mental attitude which permitted her to fall so easily into the habit of calling him that.

Also, he was in two minds about the way she would come to the door of the living room and say: "Come, Billy Boy, and dry the dishes for me--that's a good kid!" Billy had no objections to drying the dishes; of a truth, although that had been a duty which he shirked systematically in line-camps until everything in the cabin was in that state which compels action, he would have been willing to stand beside Flora Bridger at the sink and wipe dishes (and watch her bare, white arms, with the dimply elbows) from dark until dawn.

What he did object to was the half-patronizing, wholly matter-of-fact tone of her, which seemed to preclude any possibility of sentiment so far as she was concerned.
She always looked at him so frankly, with never a tinge of red in her cheeks to betray that consciousness of sex which goes ever--say what you like--with the love of a man and a maid.
He did not want her to call him "Billy Boy" in just that tone; it made him feel small and ineffective and young--he who was eight or nine years older than she! It put him down, so that he could not bring himself to making actual love to her--and once or twice when he had tried it, she took it as a great joke.
Still, it was good to have her there and to be friends.

The absence of the Pilgrim, who had gone East quite suddenly soon after the round-up was over, and the generosity of the other fellows, who saw quite plainly how it was--with Billy, at least--and forbore making any advances on their own account, made the winter pass easily and left Charming Billy in the spring not content, perhaps, but hopeful.
It was in the warm days of late April--the days which bring the birds and the tender, young grass, when the air is soft and all outdoors beckons one to come out and revel.

On such a day Billy, stirred to an indefinable elation because the world as he saw it then was altogether good, crooned his pet song while he waited at the porch with Flora's horse and his own.