Chapter II: Uncle Fred

"Where is Peggy-Alone, Prince?" inquired Mr. Frederick Dawson.

The dog had come bounding over the grass to meet him at the Tower House gate, strange to say unaccompanied by the little girl who was usually the first to greet him each evening on his return from the office.

With Prince barking and snapping at his hand, the young man hurried along the path and into the great hall.

"Yes, Prince, I know she's hiding somewhere, to jump out and scare her poor old Uncle and set his nerves all a-tremble! It was thoughtful of you to give me warning!" he said aloud. He hung up his hat, keeping a sharp lookout for the delinquent but she was nowhere in sight; no dancing footsteps were heard coming from any part of the house.

"I hope she isn't sick," he soliloquized, beginning to feel uneasy. "She's getting pale and listless. The poor little thing must be lonely here all day with no one but the servants. I wish she knew some children to play with! Confounded luck for the governess to fall sick and leave me as a sort of head nurse!" His grumbling anxious thoughts ended in an abrupt exclamation.

"Hello, there!"

Through the open door of the library he saw a little white-robed maid, seated in a great leather revolving chair, with her eyes fixed upon an object on the table beside her. If she noticed the young man's entrance or heard his voice she gave no sign, nor did she pay any attention to Prince, who led the way into the room, and strove with a great show of canine solicitude, in merry barks and gambols, to attract his young mistress' attention.

"Alene!" her Uncle said sharply, but the silence remained unbroken.

Half alarmed, he came forward and shook her by the shoulder.

"For heaven's sake, child, is anything the matter?"

Still she made no reply; she kept gazing, gazing in one direction as though fascinated.

Following her glance, he saw the fragments of a fancy Mexican tobacco-jar, which he had shown to her only the day before.

"Alene, I'm ashamed of you!" he cried in an angry tone. "Has the breaking of this jar brought you to such a state as this? Why, anyone would think--I'd swear it was the truth myself were anyone else in question--yes, they would think me an ogre who ate little girls who chanced to break something!" Turning away, he paced the floor with rapid steps backward and forward. The longer he walked, the faster he went, and higher the angry red glowed in his cheeks.

For a time Alene kept her unaccountable position. Presently her eyes strayed sidewise toward her agitated companion, who, intent on his own angry mutterings, was unaware of her inspection. The gleam of mirth that overspread her countenance was quickly banished; she rose and stood beside her chair and then crossed the floor to his side.

A little hand stole into his, a pair of blue eyes gazed contritely upward.

"Oh, Uncle, you said it was a present and I felt so badly! You aren't angry?"

"Ain't I? Do I look as if I'd beat a child?"

Suddenly his angry mood passed away, and he threw himself into a chair, in a paroxysm of laughter.

"Oh, Polly-Wog, what shall I do to make you pay up for this?"

"The jar? Did it cost so awfully much?"

"The jar you gave me when I came in, I thought you were in a trance! I had a wild notion to lose no time in bringing the doctor!"

She glanced ruefully at the broken vase.

"I was just wondering if it could be pieced together again--"

"Before the ogre got back?"

Alene perched herself on the arm of his chair with one arm around his shoulders.

"You're more like a fairy godmother--father, I mean."

"How did the terrible accident occur?"

"I picked it up to admire it and my hand got sort o' dizzy and let it fall."

"And you didn't think of running away and pretending you knew nothing about it, or blaming it on the maid?"

"Now, Uncle Fred--as if I'd be so dishonorable!"

"Well, I might, if I had such an ogre for an uncle as yours appears to be! I shouldn't fancy being ground to sausages!"

"Like Andy Daly's pig was, I guess! I must tell you about him, but there's something else to ask you first--something very important! Since you're the good fairy, you ought to grant me three wishes but I'll let you off with one."

"I'll not insist on granting the three until I hear Number One--Here goes! One, two, three--"

"Can I--may I--join the Happy-Go-Luckys?" implored Alene in an impressive voice, with clasped hands.

"The Happy-Go-Luckys! You're sure you don't mean the Ku Klux Klan? Hark, there's Kizzie coming to announce dinner. Come along and you can tell me all about it while we eat."

She took his arm with a mock fine-lady air, and walked beside him with mincing steps across the hall to the dining-room.

It was a square apartment with windows opening upon a green vista of gardens, now shut away by latticed blinds, through which the fresh spring air found way.

The bay window was filled with immense potted palms; another window led to a balcony where baskets with myrtle and other vines hung round like a heavy green curtain. The room was finished in light colored woodwork. A square rug in a pattern of tiny green and white tiles partly covered the polished floor; in the center stood a cosy round table, whose snowy napery and old silver and china were lit by a bronze lamp with an ornamental shade that resembled a gorgeous peony.

Seated opposite her Uncle, Alene, in her eagerness to relate her afternoon's adventure, almost forgot to touch the tempting dishes which Kizzie, the maid, served so deftly.

Her usually pale cheeks glowed and her eyes beamed brightly while she told of her new friends and the club.

Mr. Dawson listened with flattering attention.

"You may, you shall, you must, join the Happy-Go-Luckys! As a society for the prevention of loneliness to Peggy-Alone or any other forlorn little girl, it strikes me as a good thing," he declared.

"Oh, Uncle, you're a dear old thing!"

"An article of _virtu_ as it were. Be careful how you handle me!"

Alene gave him a reproachful look.

"There, don't start that deadly stare again! I'm not insinuating anything!"

His air of alarm amused Alene. She laughed merrily. Her joy over his permission to join the Happy-Go-Luckys banished from her Uncle's mind any doubts he may have had of her mother's approval. However, he knew something of Alene's new friends, being personally acquainted with Mr. Lee, whose work as a riverman allowed him little time at home, while Mrs. Bonner was a widow who kept a small boarding house; both families, though poor, were highly respectable.

"Since I'm left in charge of Alene, I'll use my own judgment, which tells me that it's the very thing for her. She looks improved already and I'll not let any snobbish question deprive her of happiness." Which settled the matter there and then for all concerned.

* * * * * *

"What's the matter now, Alene, that you pucker your brows over that ponderous tome?"

It was after supper, and Uncle Fred, seated in an easy chair beside the reading table in the library, was lazily puffing a pipe.

A stand near by held a large dictionary over whose pages Alene's head was bent.

Glancing up with a puzzled expression, she said: "I don't quite understand; this book says it means 'plain,' and I'm sure lots of children are quite ugly long before they are that age, and I don't think the girls are plain--Laura has lovely eyes and I never heard I was. Am I ugly, Uncle?"

"Well, one wouldn't pick you out in a crowd when all the lights were out, for a fright--"

"Oh, Uncle Fred, do be sober a minute!"

"Alene, I'm ashamed of you to hint that your guardian is ever anything else!"

"I mean grave!"

"A 'most potent, reverend and grave' old fellow am I!"

"Why, sometimes, Uncle Fred, you act as if you weren't any more than nine," said Alene, returning to the book with an air of tolerant resignation that amused the young man. He crossed to her side.

"Tell me what you are hunting; perhaps I can help you."

Alene ignored his air of exaggerated solemnity.

"You see, Laura said one must be twelve years old to be legible--to the Club, you know."

"Then if I'm not too old, I'm old enough to belong! But if I were you, I'd quit the L's and try something else very like it, with an E before," suggested Uncle Fred.

"Eligible, of course--how stupid of me!"

On the way upstairs that night Alene paused and gave way to a fit of laughter.

"What's the fun now?" called Uncle Fred from his cosy position by the table.

"It seems so funny to think that I," here came a series of mirthful sounds, "to think that you would think that I was afraid of you."

Uncle Fred's chair was overturned by his energetic uprising in pursuit of the little tease, who heeded the warning and was safely out of sight on the landing, with one parting giggle as the door of her room was shut with a resounding clap.