Diogenes had been quite docile and amenable to my rule since the licking I gave him, so we had a pleasant and comfortable return journey on the following day.

“I hope, Lucien,” said Silvia, “you won’t refuse to cash this check for a good amount. The Polydore parents may never show up, and it’s only right we should be reimbursed for their keep.”

“I will cash it,” I assured her, “and use it for a housekeeper or else send the boys off to a school. I should like very much to have it out with Felix Polydore, but, as you suggest, I may never have the opportunity to see him at close range.”

Beth, Rob, and Ptolemy met us at the station.

“Where are ‘Them Three’?” I asked hopefully.

“Huldah is feeding them little pies hot from the kettle–the kind she cooks like doughnuts, you know.”

“Huldah cooking for ‘Them Three’!” I exclaimed. “She must have passed into her second childhood. She grudged them even an apple to piece on.”

“She has pampered them ever since our return,” said Rob.

“Poor Huldah! She must indeed be afflicted with softening of the brain,” I decided.

“She has probably been so lonely, shut in here by herself,” said Silvia, “that even ‘Them Three’ looked good to her.”

In the hallway Huldah met us. She was beaming with pleasure, but except in her bearing toward the children, she was quite normal.

“We’ve all had a real good rest,” she observed, “and you do look so well, Mrs. Wade. My! but this place has been lonesome. I’m glad we’re all together again.”

“Now, Silvia, shut your eyes,” directed Beth, “and come into the library. Ptolemy has bought you a present with the check his father gave him.”

“Beth helped me pick it out,” said Ptolemy.

Beth led the way into the library, and we followed.

“Open your eyes.”

Silvia gave a little cry of pleasure, and looking over her shoulder, I beheld a baby grand piano.

“Oh, Ptolemy!” she cried, giving him a fervent kiss and fond hug, “I can never let you do so much.”

“Oh, yes,” he said, flushing a little under the endearments which were doubtless the first ever bestowed upon him. “Father’s got a whole lot of money grandpa left him and it’s fixed so he can’t draw out only so much each year. He said the board and bother of us was worth more than this and we’ll all enjoy the music. But Thag and Em and Dem ain’t to touch it. I’ll knock tar out of the first one that comes near it.”

I was disconsolate. I didn’t see how we could return it and I didn’t want the Polydore web woven any tighter. To think of Silvia’s receiving from them what it had been my longing to give her! But as I was to learn later, she was to acquire much more than a piano from the eminent family.

After dinner Silvia asked Huldah to come in and hear the music, and when Silvia’s repertoire was exhausted, we gave our faithful servant all the little details of our trip which Beth had not supplied.

“Now tell us, Huldah, how things went along here,” said Silvia.

“Well, you think some wonderful things happened to you all on your trip mebby–ghosts and proposals,” looking at Beth and Rob, “and fires and Polydores, but back here in this quiet house something happened that has your ghosts and things skinned by a mile.”

“Oh, dear!” cried Silvia apprehensively, “what is it?”

“Break it very gently, Huldah,” I cautioned. “You know we’ve borne a good deal.”

“Your uncle Issachar was here for a couple of days.”

She certainly had made a sensation.

“Not Uncle Issachar! Not here?” exclaimed Silvia incredulously.

“Yes, ma’am. He came the next day after Beth and Mr. Rossiter and Polly left. I told him you’d gone away for a little vacation and rest. I didn’t let on that I knew where you had gone, because I didn’t want him straggling up there, too, or sending for you to come back. He said your absence would make no difference to his plans; that he never let nothing do that. He come to pay a visit and he should pay one.”

“Yes,” said Silvia feebly. “That sounds like Uncle Issachar.”

“I told him to make himself perfectly at home; that every one did that to this place, and he said he would. I’d just slicked up the big front room upstairs and I seen to it that he had everything all right. I cooked the best dinner I knew how, and he said it was the first white man’s meal he had eat since his ma died, so I found out what she used to cook and fed him on it. Them three kids and him eat like they was holler. I guess if Polly hadn’t took them away your grocery bill would ’a looked like Barb’ry Allen’s grave.

“Well, as I was saying, your uncle he eat till he got over his grouches, and like enough he’d be here eating yet, if he hadn’t got a telegraph to hit the line for home, some big business deal, he said, and I guess it was a great deal, for he licked his chops and smacked his lips over it, and he give me a ten dollar bill to get a new dress and each of Them Three one dollar fer candy.”

“The old tightwad!” I exclaimed. “It was your cooking, sure, that made him loosen up that way.”

“Tightwad nothing!” she declared indignantly. “You won’t think he was tight-wadded when you read this here letter he left for you. He told me what was in it, and I’ve just been busting to tell it to Beth, but I waited for you to know it first.”

With great excitement Silvia opened the letter, read it, gasped, re-read it, and then in consternation handed it to me.

“Read it aloud, Lucien,” she bade. “Maybe I can believe it then.”

This was the letter.

“My dear Niece:

“I was sorry not to see you, but glad to learn that, as every wise and good woman should do, you are raising a fine family–a family of sons, which is what our country most needs. Your son Pythagoras informed me that you had taken your oldest child, Ptolemy, and your youngest, Diogenes, with you, I am glad you left three such promising samples for me to see.

“As you have five sons, I have, agreeable to my promise, placed in your name in the First National Bank of your city the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars.

“Your affectionate uncle,
“Issachar Innes.”

“Huldah,” I asked, “did you tell him the Polydores were our children?”

“Me?” she repeated indignantly. “Me tell a lie like that! No; I didn’t get no chance to tell him anything about them. ‘Them Three’ done the telling. The first thing that one”–pointing to Pythagoras–“said was, ‘Mudder went away and took the baby, Diogenes, with her.’ And then that next one”–indicating Emerald–“said: ‘Yes, and our oldest brother, Ptolemy, went on with Beth to see them.’

“The old gent asked them all their names and ages and he was so pleased and said he thought it was just fine for you to raise five sons, so I didn’t have no heart to tell him no different. ‘Twan’t none of my business anyhow. Then ‘Them Three’ kept talking about stepdaddy, and your Uncle Issachar asks ‘Who the devil is he? Did my niece marry again?’ And I told him as how Mr. Wade was all the husband you ever had, and that stepdaddy was nothing but a sort of pet-name the kids had give Mr. Wade.”

“I told him,” said Demetrius, “that stepdaddy was cross to us sometimes and not as nice as mudder, and he said–”

“You shut up,” commanded Huldah quickly, “and let me talk.”

“No,” I intercepted, “I’d really be interested in hearing what he told Uncle Issachar. What was it, Demetrius, that your great-uncle said to you?”

“He said,” stated the imp, darting his tongue out in triumph at his victory over Huldah, “that he always thought you was a stiff.”

“He didn’t say nothing of the kind!” declared Huldah. “He said you was stiff-necked, and that he presumed you would act more like a stepfather than the real thing. Well, as I was saying, he asked their names, and he liked them fine. Said they were so classy.”

“Didn’t he say classic, Huldah?” inquired Rob.

“Mebby. What’s the difference?” snapped Huldah.

“None,” I assured her quickly, dodging a definition.

“She told him–” began Emerald.

“You shut up,” again adjured Huldah, “or I’ll never bake you one of those small pies no more.”

“Oh, please, Huldah,” I coaxed. “Let us hear everything. I’ve always told you my life’s secrets, and I don’t mind what you or the boys told him.”

“Well, I suppose what he was going to tattle was that I thought the old gent might feel hurt, ’cause none of them was named after him, so I told him Polly’s middle name was Issachar.”

“Why, Huldah,” remonstrated Silvia.

“Well, he’s always wanted a middle name, and he’s never been baptized, so you can stick it in and have him ducked next Sunday and then that will square that. ‘Them Three’ stuck to him like a hive of bees, and I was scairt for fear they’d let the cat out of the bag, and so long as they had put it in, I thought it might just as well stay in, but they were just as slick as grease in all they said. They’ll hang in that rogues’ gallery yet.”

“I suppose they were pretty–strenuous,” said Silvia with a sigh.

“They was more than that. The first afternoon right after dinner when he was sitting on the front porch, sleeping peaceful and snoring, that there one–” pointing to Pythagoras–

“Tattle-tale!” he began, but I administered a cuff and he subsided into surprised silence.

“He,” said Huldah, looking pleased at this little attention to the boy, “went to the front window and dropped a young kitten down on the old gent’s head. It clawed something fierce. We had just got things going smooth again when Emmy got one of his earaches. I roasted an onion and put in his ear, and what did he do but take it out of his ear and slip it down your poor uncle’s back.”

“Why didn’t you beat them?” I asked indignantly.

“Because the old gent did that. He put ’em across his knee, and believe me, it was some licking they caught. They didn’t let out a whimper and that pleased him.”

“Huh!” said Emerald. “Thag don’t know how to cry. He hasn’t got any tears, and old Uncle Iz didn’t hurt me, because, you see, when I heard Thag getting his, I went and stuffed the Declaration of Independence, that book of stepdaddy’s that Demetrius tore the pictures out of, in my pants.”

“Go on!” urged Rob delightedly. “What else did you all do? Uncle must have had some time. It would make a fine scenario. ‘The first visit of the rich uncle.’”

“Well,” resumed Huldah. “One of ’em put red pepper in the old man’s bed, and he like to sneeze his head off, but he said as how sneezing was healthy, and showed you’d got rid of a cold.”

“He never got on to the pepper,” said Demetrius gleefully.

“In the morning, that second one put a toad in his new uncle’s pocket, and Emmy broke his specs. Then Meetie he dropped his watch. They used his razor to cut the lawn with. And then they took him down to the creek to go fishing, and they put the fish in Uncle’s silk hat, and and–”

“Stop!” implored Silvia, who was now in tears. “Uncle Issachar believes them mine! Ours! And that I brought them up! Oh, why did we ever go away?”

“Oh, pshaw,” exclaimed Huldah comfortingly, “he said you had brung them up fine; that they were no mollycoddles or Lizzie boys, and he didn’t suppose you had so much sense as to leave them natural.”

“A left-handed one for mudder,” laughed Beth.

“He must be a very peculiar man–ready for the asylum, I should say,” commented Rob.

“He would have been if he’d stayed any longer, or else I would have been,” declared Huldah.

“Couldn’t you make them behave, someway?” asked Silvia.

“Well, at first I tried to, and every time I pinched one of ’em when the old gent wasn’t looking, or knocked ’em down when I got ’em alone, they would threaten to tell who they was, and then when I seen how your uncle liked the way they acted, I just let ’em go it, head on. And seeing as how they each brung you five thousand, I’ve treated ’em best I know how. They’re worth it, now. They done one thing more that was awful. Could you stand it to hear?” turning to Silvia.

“Please, Silvia,” implored Rob.

“Well,” argued Silvia faintly. “I suppose we might as well know the worst.”

“You see the old gent didn’t always get up to breakfast with the kids and one morning when I brought in the cakes Emmy looked up and grinned. I nearly dropped the plate. He had both sets of the old man’s false teeth in his mouth. I got ’em back in his room without his waking, but I’d have liked a picture of Emmy.”

“Pythagoras,” I demanded, when we had recovered from this recital, “why didn’t you tell him who you were, and how you all came to be here with us?”

“Because she is our mudder, and we are going to stay with her, always. We’ve got a snap. So has father and mother. And Ptolemy told us that if you ever got any kids, you’d get five thousand each for them, and I thought we’d just make that much for you. So we played Uncle Iz for it. Easy money, all right, all right.”

“Talk about fine financiering,” quoth Rob. “‘Them Three’ will surely land on Wall Street.”

But poor Silvia had no heart for humor and was weeping silently.

“Why, look here, my dear,” I said in consolation, “this is a very simple matter to adjust. In the morning when you feel better, just write a full explanation of the affair and inclose your check for twenty-five thousand.”

Silvia quickly wiped away her tears.

“I’ll do it tonight, Lucien. I feel better now. I never thought of writing.”

Huldah and “Them Three” looked most lugubrious.

“The old skinflint won’t miss it as much as I would a penny,” declared our faithful handmaiden. “And I’m sure you’ve earnt that twenty-five thousand if anyone ever did. You’ve had as much care and worry about them brats as you would if they’d been your own.”

“Huldah,” I said severely, “there is a pretty stiff penalty for obtaining money under false pretences.”

“After all the pains we took to make things lively for him, so he wouldn’t get bored and think he was having a poor time!” regretted Pythagoras.

“And us watching every word we spoke so as not to give it away,” wailed Emerald.

“Cake’s all dough,” muttered Demetrius.

Ptolemy regarded the three disapprovingly. He had the old inscrutable look, the look that foreboded mischief, in his eyes.

“You bungled, you fool kids!” he said in disgust, “and Huldah, what did you want to let on to mudder for that he thought we was hers? You ought to have torn up the note he left and just said he’d put twenty-five thousand in the bank for her.”

“Huh! you’re just jealous because you weren’t in the Uncle Izzy deal yourself,” jeered Pythagoras. “You always think you’re the only one that can do anything right.”

“I wish you had been here, Polly,” said Huldah, “I am sure you could have worked it through somehow.”

“I wish I had stayed and put it across,” he answered. “If you and the kids would only learn not to blab everything you know. It’s the only way to work anything. Minute you tell a thing, it’s all off.”

There was still a great deal of development work to be put on Ptolemy’s moral standard.

“You’ll find, my lad,” remonstrated Rob, “that honesty is the best policy.”

“I’d have been perfectly honest about it,” he defended. “I would have told him the truth, and how our parents had deserted us, and how mudder took us in when we were homeless and was bringing us up like her own because she hadn’t got any, and how stepdaddy wanted to turn us out, and she wouldn’t let him, and then he would have decided against stepdaddy and given mudder the money so she could keep us.”

“Ptolemy,” I said warningly, “there is a way of telling the truth, or rather of coloring white lies with enough truth to make them deceive, that is more dishonorable than an out and out lie.”

“Tell me, Ptolemy,” asked Silvia, “how did you know about that offer of five thousand dollars for each child?”

“I overheard it,” he said guardedly; “but I can’t remember where.”

“He heard me say so,” confessed Huldah.

“It was when he first come here and he was making us so much trouble, and I told him it was too bad we had to have other folks’ brats around when, if we only had our own, they’d be bringing in something.”

The recital now broke up and Silvia sat down to write a long explanatory letter to Uncle Issachar. The next morning I procured her a check from the First National Bank and she filled it out.

“Oh!” she said with indrawn breath, when she had asked me how to write twenty-five thousand dollars, “I never expected to be able to sign my name to a check for such an amount.”

“You never will again, I fear,” was my sad prophecy.

“It must feel rich,” said Beth, “just to have a large check pass through your fingers.”

“Them Three” came the nearest to tears that they were able to do.

“We worked so hard for it,” they sighed.

“So did I!” muttered Huldah.

“I couldn’t live a double life,” declared Silvia.

Chapter XVIII
In Which I Decide on Extreme Measures

Everyone in our house, which was now filled to overflowing–in fact, there were Polydores on sofas and in beds on the floor–save Silvia and myself, was on the alert for a response to the letter during the succeeding few days. Knowing Uncle Issachar, we felt sure he would make no response, or notice the matter in any way save to cash the check promptly.

The monotony was somewhat relieved by the difficulties under which Beth and Rob were pursuing their courtship. On the third evening succeeding our return, Silvia and I started upstairs early to give them a chance to have the exclusive use of the library, the Polydores having all been sent to bed. As we were making some plausible excuse for going to our room, Beth remarked with a smile:

“Your motive in retiring so early is commendable, but of no particular benefit to Rob and me. The Polydores, like the poor, we always have with us.”

“I saw that every one of them except Ptolemy was in bed at eight o’clock last night and the night before,” said Silvia. “You don’t mean to tell me–”

“Yes, I do mean,” laughed Beth. “Not Ptolemy, though. He has become too dignified to spy on us, but last night as we sat here on the settee, we heard a suppressed sneeze, and Rob pulled Emerald from underneath.”

“How in the world did he ever squeeze under there?” I asked, gazing at the slight space between the floor and settee.

“He did look a little flattened, as if he had been put in a letter press,” said Rob. “I gave him a dime to go to bed and stay there. Beth and I had just resumed our conversation when a still, small voice said: ‘I’ll go to bed for a dime, too.’ I then hauled Demetrius from behind the davenport.”

“And the night before,” said Beth, “when we were sitting on the porch, Pythagoras rolled off the roof, where he had been listening to us, and came down into the vines.”

“Now I’ll stop that,” I declared. “I’ll tie them in their beds and lock the doors and windows.”

“No,” refused Rob. “I’d like to try to circumvent them by their own weapons of wits. I have a little plan which I don’t dare whisper to you lest their long-range ears get in their work. We are just about to start for a walk.”

“In this pouring rain!” protested Silvia.

“We like the rain,” he replied, “and we–are not going far.”

Pythagoras entered the room just then and looked astounded and disappointed when he saw Beth and Rob departing.

“We are going out to a small party,” Rob remarked to me, casually.

It was after eleven when we heard them returning.

“Do you suppose they have been walking all this time?” said Silvia in concern. “Beth wore no rubbers.”

The next day was Sunday and Huldah put into execution a plan for procuring one happy hour each week. This plan was the admission of the Polydores, en masse, to one of the Sunday schools. She chose the church most remote from home so they would be a long time going and coming, which she said would “help some.”

“Now,” said Beth, as she watched them march away, “I can dare to tell you where we spent last evening. We were at the Polydore house next door. There is a little vine-screened porch on the other side of the house. Rob managed to open one of the windows and brought out a couple of chairs. It was as snug as could be.”

“I’ll corral them every night,” I said, “until you make your getaway, and I’ll give you the key so you can go inside when it is cool or stormy.”

“We’ll go around the block by way of precaution,” said Rob.

Presently Huldah returned from the Sunday school with triumphant mien.

“They made them all into one class and put a redheaded woman with spectacles in for their teacher. I gave them street car tickets to come home on.”

When the Polydores returned, however, they were dragging Diogenes along and he looked quite weary.

“Didn’t you come home on the street car?” I asked Ptolemy.

“No; we sold our tickets and got ice cream sodas,” he explained. “We took turns carrying Diogenes on our backs.”

“You only had one ticket for yourself, and two half fares for Thag and Emmy,” said Huldah suspiciously. “I thought Meetie and Di could ride free. You couldn’t have sold them tickets for enough for sodies.”

“Rob gave us three nickels to put in the plate,” said Pythagoras. “We only put in one of them, seeing we were all in one family and one class. That gave us four nickels for ice cream sodas and the clerk gave Di half a glass some one had left.”

“I gave you a penny for Di to put in,” said Huldah. “What did you do with that?”

“We wanted him to put it in, and when they took up the collection, he wouldn’t give it,” said Emerald. “I tried to take it away from him and he swallowed it. The redhead teacher was awful scared, but I told her he was used to swallowing things and that you said he carried a whole department store in his insides.”

“Poor little Di,” said Silvia; “it’s the only way he has of keeping things away from you all.”

That night I saw to it personally that each and every Polydore was in his little bed. It should have aroused my suspicions that none of them rebelled, or had evinced the slightest degree of interest or curiosity when Beth and Rob announced their intention of going out for the evening.

At ten-thirty the lovers returned, bringing in Pythagoras, who was clad in his pajamas.

“Where did you pick him up?” I asked in astonishment.

“He picked us up,” said Beth.

“He was wise, maybe, in discovering where we were,” said Rob, “but he fell down when he tried to work off the ghost screeches on us. We recognized them at once, and ran him down inside, so our party broke up.”

“Come here, Pythagoras,” I commanded.

He obeyed promptly and fearlessly.

“How did you know they were there, and when did you go over there?”

“I was playing over in our house today,” he replied, “and I found one of Beth’s hairpins with the little stones in, in the big chair, so I knew that was where they hid last night. As soon as you went down stairs tonight, I got out the window and slid down the roof and came over to scare them.”

“You’ve missed a lot of sleep the last few nights,” I said quietly, “so you will have to make it up. You can stay in bed all day tomorrow.”

“Hold on, Lucien!” exclaimed Rob. “Tomorrow’s the big baseball game of the season, and I promised to take them all.”

“So much the better,” I said. “He will learn to mind.”

Pythagoras looked as if he had been struck, and quickly put his arms across his eyes. In a moment his shoulders were heaving. At last I had found a vulnerable spot in the stoic, and I began to relent.

“See here, Pythagoras,” I said, “if I let you up in time to go to the game, will you promise me something?”

“Anything,” came in a muffled voice.

“Will you promise not to spy on Beth and Rob and keep Emerald and Demetrius from doing it?”

“Yes,” he promised quickly, his arm coming down and his face brightening. “Sure I will, but I did want to hear what they said.”

“Why?” asked Rob interestedly.

“We’re getting up a show, and Em is going to take the part of a girl and he spoons with Tolly, and we didn’t know what to have them say to each other.”

“I’ll rehearse you on the play, and prompt you,” said Beth with a little giggle.

“Come on upstairs with me now,” I said to Pythagoras.

When I landed him at his door, he leaned up against me, and rubbed his cheek against my arm.

“Thank you for letting me go to the game,” he said.

I found myself responding to his affectionate advance. This would clearly never do. I couldn’t let another Polydore squeeze himself into my regard.

“Silvia,” I said abruptly, as I came into our room, “we must really make some immediate plan for disposing of the Polydores, or, at least, of ‘Them Three.’”

“Huldah is managing them tolerably well,” demurred Silvia. “Since they depreciated in market value from five thousand per to nothing, she has resumed her former harsh treatment of them.”

“Well, we are not going to keep them,” I replied with finality. “We are under no obligations to do so. I am going to put them in a school for boys and use the blank check Felix Polydore left to pay for their tuition.”

“I suppose that is what we will have to do,” she admitted with a little sigh. “Yet, Lucien, it doesn’t seem quite right. If they are in a boys’ school, they will keep on right along the same lines. They need home influence and contact with women. Demetrius is fond of music and will sit still and listen when I play. Emerald obeyed me today the first time I spoke, and I even thought I saw a glimmer of good in Pythagoras.”

I didn’t tell her that this glimmer was what had decided me to dispose of him.

“It would, doubtless, be better for them to stay,” I admitted, “but I am not going to be a martyr to the cause. They are going.”

The next morning I wrote for catalogues and prospectus to the different schools, and I felt as if three old men of the sea had been lifted from my shoulders.