Part 10

"Dicky is six years old," said the Lady. "I married his Father a year and a half ago. His Father was killed in an accident a year ago--"

"Oh dear--Oh dear," said our Uncle Peter.

The Lady began all over again as though it was a lesson.

"Dicky is six years old," she said. "I married his Father a year and a half ago. He was killed in an accident a year ago. It was all so sudden,--the marriage,--the accident,--everything--!" She began to cry a little. It made her clothes look sorrowfuller and sorrowfuller and her face more and more surprised. Once again she curled up her white pond-lily hands at our Uncle Peter. It was as though she thought that our Uncle Peter could help her perhaps with some of her surprises. "I--I didn't know his Father very long," she cried. "I never knew his Mother at all!----It's--It's pretty bewildering," she said, "to be left all alone--for life--with a perfectly, strange little boy--who isn't any relation at all!--All his funny little suits to worry about--and his mumps and his measles--and--and whether he ought to play marbles 'for keeps'--and shall I send him to college or not? And suppose he turns out a burglar or something dreadful like that?--And how in the world am I going to tackle his first love affair? Or his choice of a profession?--Merciful Heavens!--Perhaps he'll want to fly!"

"Why--you're just like a Hen," said our Uncle Peter.

The Lady didn't like to be called a Hen.

It ruffled her all up.

Our Uncle Peter had to talk about Base Ball to soothe her.

The Lady didn't know anything about Base Ball but it seemed to soothe her considerably to hear about it.

When our Uncle Peter was all through soothing her she looked up as pleasant as pleasant could be.

"WHY?" she said.

"Why--what?" said our Uncle Peter. He seemed a little perplexed.

"Why--am I like a Hen?" said the Lady.

"O--h," said our Uncle Peter. He acted very much relieved. "O--h," he said. "I was afraid it was something you were going to ask me about Base Ball. But a Hen----?" He looked with smiles at the Lady. "Oh but a Hen--?--Why even a Hen, my dear Madam," he smiled, "a real professional true-enough hen doesn't take any too easily to the actual chick itself until she's served a certain sit-tightly, go-lightly, egg-shell sort of apprenticeship as it were to the IDEA.--Thrust a bunch of chicks under her before she's served this apprenticeship and----"

I jumped up and down and clapped my hands. I just couldn't help it.

"Oh, I know what happens!" I cried. "She sits too heavy! And squashes 'em perfectly flat!--There was a hen," I cried. "Her name was Lizzie! She was a good hen! But childless! The Grocer gave us some day-old chicks to put under her! But when we went out to the nest the next morning to see 'em--they couldn't have been flatter if they'd been pressed in the Bible!--My Brother Carol cried,--I cried,--my Mother----"

"I don't care at all who cried," said the Lady. It was true. She didn't. All she cared was to look at our Uncle Peter. The look was a stern look.

"And are you trying to imply, Mr.--Mr.--?"

"Merredith," said our Uncle Peter. "Percival Merredith.--'Uncle Peter' for short."

"Mr. Merredith," repeated the Lady coldly. "Are you trying to imply that my----step-son looks as though he had been pressed in a--a--Bible?"

I shook in my boots. Carol shook in his boots. You could hear us.

Our Uncle Peter never shook a bit. He just twinkled.

"Well--hardly," he said.

The Lady looked pretty surprised. When she wasn't looking surprised she looked thoughtful.

Her voice sounded little when she got it started again.

"Maybe--Maybe I DO take my responsibilities too heavily," she said. "But it's this--this sleeping business that worries me so."

"I should think it would," said our Uncle Peter.

"No Nurse Maid will stay with me," said the Lady. "They say it gives them the creeps.--It's enough to give anyone the creeps.--A grown person of course expects a certain amount of wakefulness, but a child,--a little care-free--heedless child--? Just when you think you've got him safely to sleep--all cuddled up in your own bed or even in his own bed--and are just drowsing off into the first real sleep you've had for a week--?--Patter--Patter--Patter in the hall! Creak--Creak--Creak on the stairs! A chair bumped over in the Library!--Bumped over on purpose you understand! Just to make a noise! 'Noises are his friends,' he says. Why once--once--" The Lady's mouth smiled a little. "Once when I woke and missed him and hunted everywhere--I found him at last in the Pantry--on the floor--with his ear cuddled close up to a mouse-hole! Mouse-Nibble Noises he says are his special friends in the middle of the night when there isn't anything else.--ANYTHING to break the silence it seems to be!--Why in the world should he be afraid of a Silence? Nobody can account for it!"

"Possibly not," said our Uncle Peter. "Yet the fact remains that either within or just outside the borders of his consciousness the only two people responsible for his Being have disappeared unaccountably into a Silence----from which they have not returned."

"Oh dear," said the Lady. "I never thought of that! You mean--You mean--that perhaps he thinks that a Silence is a Hole that you might fall into if you don't fill it up with a Noise? Why the poor little fellow!--How in the world is one ever to tell?--Oh dear--Oh dear----" She sank back in her chair and floated her hands in her lap. Her eyes looked as though she was going to cry again. But she didn't cry. That is, not much. Mostly she just sighed. "It isn't as though he was an easy child to understand," she sighed. "He catches cold so easily, and mumps and everything.--And he's so irritable.--He kicks,--he bites,--he scratches!"

"So I have seen demonstrated," said our Uncle Peter.

"Oh, it's quite evident," cried the Lady, "that you think I'm harsh with him!--But whatever in the world would YOU do?" She threw out her hands toward the pretty room,--the rugs,--the pictures,--the fire,--the toys. "Perhaps you can tell me what he NEEDS?" she said.

"A good spanking," said our Uncle Peter.

The Lady gave a little gasp.

"Oh, not for punishment," said our Uncle Peter. "But just for exercise.--It's the only exercise that a lot of pampered, sedentary children ever get!"

"P--Pampered?" gasped the Lady. "S--Sed--entary?" As though her head was bursting with the noises all around the room she clapped her hands over her ears.

Our Uncle Peter jumped up from his chair and began to chase the little tin railroad train. It looked funny to see so large a man running after so small a train. When he caught it it was having a railroad accident in the tunnel under the table where a book had fallen on the track. Like a beetle with no paint on its stomach he left it lying on its back with its little wheels kicking in the air.

"If only all the racket was as easily disposed of!" said the Lady.

"It IS!" said our Uncle Peter.

Like turning off faucets of water he turned off the noises one by one,--the window-breeze that made the glass dangles tinkle,--the funny jiggly spring that kept the toy bird screaming "Hi-Hi" in its wicker cake,--the music box that tooted horns and beat drums right in the middle of its best tunes! He looked like a giant stalking through the Noah's Ark animals! His foot was longer than the village store!

"If only I figured as largely in a less miniature world!" he said.

He looked at the Lady very hard when he said it as though he was saying something very important.

The Lady didn't seem to consider it important at all. She looked at her skirts instead and smoothed them very tidily.

"It's a--It's a pleasant day--isn't it?" said our Uncle Peter.

"V--very," said the Lady. Quite suddenly she looked up at him. Her cheeks were pink. She seemed to want to speak but didn't know quite how. She looked more surprised than ever. She bent forward very suddenly and stared and stared at him.

"Why--Why you're the gentleman," she said, "who was in the Fruit Store the day I bought the Alligator pears and dropped my pocket-book down behind the trash-barrel?"

"Also the day you bought the Red Mackintosh Apples," said our Uncle Peter. "The Grocer cheated you outrageously on them.--Also the day you wore the bunch of white violets and pricked your finger so brutally,--also the day on the ferry when there was a slight collision with a tug-boat and I had the privilege of--of----."

The Lady looked very haughty.

"It was the day of the Alligator Pears--that I referred to," she said. "The only day in my recollection!" Very positively she said it,--"the only day in my recollection." But all the time that she said it her cheeks got pinker and pinker. It was when she looked in the glass and saw how mistaken her positiveness looked that her cheeks got so pink. Tap--Tap--Tap her foot stamped on the rug. "Did--Did you know who it was going to be----when you brought the dog?" she said. "That is,--did you know when you first saw the advertisement in the paper." Her white forehead got all black and frowny. "How in the world did you know--my name?" she said.

Our Uncle Peter made an expression on his face. It was the expression that our Mother calls his "Third-Helping-of-Apple-Pie Expression,"--bold and unashamed.

"I asked the Grocer," he said.

"It was a--a great liberty," said the Lady.

"Was it?" said our Uncle Peter. He didn't seem as sorry as you'd have expected.

The Lady looked at Carol. The Lady looked at me.

"How many children have you?" she said.

"None of my own," said our Uncle Peter. "But three of my brother Philip's,--Carol and Ruthy as here observed, and Rosalee aet. eighteen who is at present in Cuba engaging herself to be married."

"O--h," said the Lady.

"I am in short," said our Uncle Peter, "that object of Romance and Pity popularly known as a 'Bachelor Uncle.'"

"O--h," said the Lady. She seemed more relieved than you'd have supposed.

"But in my own case, of course--" said our Uncle Peter.

In the very midst of his own case he stopped right off short to look all around the room again as though he was counting how heavy the toys were and how heavy the money was that had bought the toys. All the twinkle came back to his eyes.

"But in my own case," he said, "I've always known ahead--of course--for a very long time--that I was going to have 'em.--Learned to sit lightly on the idea,--re-balance my prejudices,--re-adjust my--"

"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.

The Lady swooned into her chair.

Our Uncle Peter had to get a glass of water to un-swoon her.

I ran for a fan. It bursted my garter. When our Uncle Peter tried to mend it he swore instead.

The Lady came out of her swoon without an instant's hesitation.

"Here at least," she said, "is something that I know enough to do."

Her mouth was full of scorn and pins. It was with pins that she knew enough to do it.

Our Uncle Peter looked very humble.

The Lady patted my knees.

"Little girls are so much easier to manage than little boys," she said. "I don't seem to understand little boys."

"Nor big boys either!" said our Uncle Peter. He said it with gruffness. It sounded cross.

"Perhaps I--don't want to understand them," said the Lady.

Our Uncle Peter's cheeks got sort of red.

"Suit yourself, my dear Madam," he said and started for the door. He picked up my hat and put it on Carol's head.--Carol's head looked pretty astonished. He took Carol's cap and put it on my head. He handed us our coats upside down.--All our pennies and treasures fell out on the floor. He snatched up the little boy's gloves by mistake and thrust them into his own pockets.

The Lady collected everything again and re-distributed them. She seemed to think it was funny. Not very funny but just a little. She looked at Carol sort of specially.

"Oh my dear Child," she said. "I hope you didn't mind because Dicky called you a 'Silence'?"

Carol did mind. He minded very much. I could tell by the way he carried his ears. They looked very stately. Our Uncle Peter whirled round in the door-way. His ears looked pretty stately too.

"All the men in our family," he said, "aim to meet the exigencies of life--sensibly."

The Lady seemed to consider the fact quite a long time before she smiled again.

"Oh very well," she said. "If the Uncle really is as sensible as the nephew perhaps he will consent to leave the children here with me to-night--instead of bearing them off to the confusion and general mis-button-ness of hotels."

Our Uncle Peter's face fairly burst into relief.

"Oh, do you really mean that?" he cried. "It IS their infernal buttons that makes most of the worry!--And their prayers?--What IS the difference anyway between a morning and an evening prayer?--And this awful responsibility about cereals? And how in the world do you make sure about their necks?"

"Oh those are the things I know perfectly," said the Lady. "All the nice gentle in-door things."

Our Uncle Peter began to strut again.

"Oh pshaw!" he said. "It's only the outdoor things that are really important,--how to climb mountains, how to stop a runaway horse,--how to smother a grass fire!"

It put the Lady all in a flutter.

"Oh pshaw!" said our Uncle Peter. "That's nothing!--The very first instant you hear the maddened hoofs on the pavement you place yourself thus! And THUS!--And----"

The Lady tried to explain to him the difference between a morning and an evening prayer. "Now at night, of course," she explained, "everything is so very lonely that--"

Our Uncle Peter didn't seem to care at all how lonely it was.

"The instant you see the horses's blood-red nostrils,--JUMP!" cried our Uncle Peter.

It sounded pretty muddled to me.

"Personally," insisted the Lady, "I consider a rather soft sponge best for the neck."

"So that with your hands clutched like a vise on either side of the mouth," cried our Uncle Peter, "you can saw up and down with all the violence at your command! Now in fighting a grass fire, it's craft, not might, that you need. In that case of course--"

"Two hours if you're using a double boiler," explained the Lady, "but many people consider a rapider action more digestible, I suppose."

"My dear Lady----let me finish my explanation!" said our Uncle Peter.

"But I want to finish mine!" said the Lady.

Our legs got pretty tired waiting for all the explanations to get un-mixed up again.

It was nine o'clock before the Lady gave our Uncle Peter a cup of hot chocolate and turned him out doors.

"Just like a dog," said our Uncle Peter. We heard him say it across his shoulder as he went down the steps.

It made the Lady laugh a little.

It was warm milk in two great blue bowls that she gave us. "Just like kittens," we thought it was!

We heard the little boy's feet come thud-thud-thudding up the stairs. We heard Tiger Lily's toe-nails click-click-click along behind him.

The little boy looked very full of chicken and joyfulness. So did Tiger Lily.