Billy is engaged to Bertram, and everyone in both families has an opinion — while a composer, a sister-in-law and a very great deal of Boston propriety take a hand. Porter trained as a singer in Boston before turning to fiction and in 1913 gave the language a word, Pollyanna; the Billy books are her comedy of a household of bachelors invaded by a girl, and this is the one where the machinery pays off. Fifty-eight plates of Boston streets, old houses and portrait heads by Childe Hassam and William Merritt Chase give this comedy of manners its proper setting.
