"Have-what?" gasped the Lady.
"Nephews and nieces," said our Uncle Peter.
"O-h," said the Lady.
"Had their names all selected I mean," explained our Uncle Peter. "Their virtues, their vices, their avocations, all decided upon.--Ruthy of course might have done with less freckles, and Carol here doesn't quite come up to specifications yet concerning muscle and brawn-and it was never my original intention of course that any young whipper-snapper niece of mine should engage herself to the first boy she fell in love with.-But taken all in all,-all in all I say-"
"I think," frowned the Lady, "you are perfectly--absurd."
The word "absurd" didn't seem to be at all the word she meant to say. She tried to bite it back but got it all mixed up with a little giggle. She bit the giggle instead. It twisted her mouth like a bitter taste.
Our Uncle Peter looked very sympathetic.
"You ought to get away somewhere on a journey," he said. "There's nothing like it as a tonic for the mind. Even if it's a place you don't like very much it clarifies the vision so,-dissipates all one's minor worries."
"-Minor worries?" said the Lady.
"Travel! Yes that's the thing!" said our Uncle Peter quite positively. All in a minute he seemed to rustle with time tables and maps and smell of cinders and railroad tickets. "Now there's Bermuda for instance!" he suggested. "Just a month of blue waters and white sand would put the roses back in your cheeks.-And Dicky-"
"Impossible," said the Lady.
"Or if Bermuda's too far," insisted our Uncle Peter. "What about Atlantic City? Think how Dicky would enjoy romping on the board walk-while you followed more sedately of course in a luxurious wheel chair!-The most diverting place in the world!-Yes quite surely you must go to Atlantic City!"
The Lady made a little gasp as though her Patience was bursted.
"You don't seem to understand," she said. "I tell you it's quite impossible!"
"W-H-Y?" said our Uncle Peter. He said it sharply like a Teacher. It HAD to be answered.
The Lady looked up. She looked down. She looked sideways. She wrung her hands in her lap. Her face got sort of white.
"It isn't very kind of you," she said, "to force me so to a confession of poverty."
"'Poverty'?" laughed our Uncle Peter. He looked around at the furniture,-at the toys,-at the pictures. It was at most everything that he looked around. He seemed to be very cheerful about it.
The Lady didn't like his cheerfulness.
"Oh I've always had a little for myself," she explained. "Enough for one person to live very simply on. But NOW--? With this strange little boy on my hands,-I-I intend to go to work!"
"Go to--work?" said our Uncle Peter. "WORK?" He said it with a sort of a hoot. "Work? Work? Why, what in the world could YOU do?"
"I can crochet," said the Lady proudly. "And embroider. I can mend. I can play the piano. And really you know I can make the most beautiful pies."
"Apple pies," said our Uncle Peter.
"Apple pies," said the Lady. Like a handful of black tissue paper she crumpled up suddenly in her chair. Her shoulders shook and shook. The sound she made was like a sob going down and a laugh coming up. "I'm not crying," she said, "because it's so hard-but b-because the idea is so f-funny."
"F-F-Funny?" said our Uncle Peter. "It's preposterous! It's gro-tesque! It's-it's fantastic!"
He began to walk very fast from the book-case to the window and from the window back to the book-case again. It wasn't till he'd stubbed his toe twice on a toy Ferris Wheel that the twinkle came back to his eyes.
"Carol!" he said. "Ruthy!-In consideration of the reduced circumstances in which this very pleasant Lady finds herself don't you think that you could afford to offer her a reduced price on the dog,-your original profit on the deal being as noted $49.50?"
The Lady jumped to her feet.
"Oh no-no-no!" she said. "Not for a moment! Fifty dollars is what I offered! And fifty dollars it shall be! All dogs I'm sure are worth fifty dollars. Especially if they don't sleep! Why all the other dogs that people brought me did nothing except sleep! On my sofas! In my chairs! Under my tables! Night or day you couldn't drop even so much as a handkerchief on the floor that one or the other of them didn't camp right down and go to sleep on it! Oh, no-no-no," protested the Lady, "whatever my faults, a bargain is a bargain and--"
"Whatever your faults, my dear Madam," said our Uncle Peter, "they are essentially feminine and therefore enchanting! It is only when ladies ape the faults of men that men resent the same!-Your extravagant indulgency-" he bowed towards the toys-"your absolute innocence of all business guile-" he bowed towards Tiger Lily-"nerves strung so exquisitely that the slightest-the slightest-"
The Lady shivered her clothes like a black frost.
"It was advice that I was looking for, not compliments," she said.
"Oh ho!" said Uncle Peter. "I'm infinitely more adept with advice than I am with compliments!"
The Lady looked a little bit surprised. She frowned.
"It's my little boy that I want advice about," she said. "What IS the best thing I can do for him?"
Our Uncle Peter looked at the ceiling. He looked at the rug. He looked at the pictures on the wall. But it seemed to satisfy him most to look at the Lady's face.
"U-m-m," he said. "U-m-mmmm.-That isn't an easy question to answer unless you're willing first to answer a question of mine."
"Ask any question you want to," said the Lady.
"U-m-m," said our Uncle Peter all over again. "U-m-m-Um-m-m-U-m-m. It takes a great deal of patience," said our Uncle Peter, "to bring up a little boy.-Unless every time he's naughty you can say to yourself 'Well, even so-think what a good man his Father grew to be!'--Or every time he's good you're fair enough to admit that 'Even his naughty Father was once as nice as this!'"--All the twinkle went suddenly out of our Uncle Peter's eyes. It left them looking narrow. He made a quick glance at Carol. He made a quick glance at me. He seemed very pleased that we were so busy looking at a map of Bermuda. He stepped a little nearer to the Lady. His voice sounded funny. "Were you-were you very fond of the little boy's Father?" he said.
The Lady's face went blazing like a flame out of her black clothes. It was like a white flame that it went blazing. Her eyes looked screaming.
"How dare you?" she said. "You have no business!-What if I was?-What if I wasn't?" All the scream in her eyes fell down her throat into a whisper. "Suppose-Suppose-I-WASN'T?" she whispered.
"Then indeed I CAN give you advice," said our Uncle Peter.
The Lady reached out a hand to the book-case to make herself more steady.
"What-what is it?" she said.
Our Uncle Peter looked funnier and funnier. It wasn't like Christmas that he looked. Nor Fourth of July. Nor even like when we've got the mumps or the measles. It was like Easter Sunday that he looked! There was no twinkle in it. Nor any smoke. Nor even paper dolls. But just SHININGNESS! His voice was all SHININGNESS too!-If it hadn't been you never could have heard it 'cause he made his words so little.
"It's almost a year now," he said, "since our eyes first met.-You've tried your best to hide from me-but you couldn't do it.-Fate had other ideas in mind.-A chance encounter on the street,-that day on the ferry boat,-your funny little dog-advertisement in the paper?"
Quite suddenly our Uncle Peter straightened up like a soldier and spoke right out loud again.
"About your little boy," he said, "my advice about your little boy?-It being indeed so well-nigh impossible, Madam, for a woman to bring up a little boy very successfully unless-she did love his Father,-my advice to you is that without the slightest unnecessary delay you proceed to get him a Father whom you COULD love!"
Whereupon, as people always say in books, our Uncle Peter turned upon his heel and started for the door.