Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 163, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 July 1915 — UNCLE PETER ARRANGES [ARTICLE]

UNCLE PETER ARRANGES

By MARTHA M’CULLOCH-WIL-LIAMS.

Jenny Gray waited on the Gray piazza, which had a look of spickspan new-fashionedness to match the affections of its lord and master, who was coming home that day, bringing a new wife and a newer young brother. Jenny, raging against the change, had been too sensible, withal too thoroughbred, to be otherwise than passively disagreeable. She had done her very best with everything—even the wilting, fretful August roses. Her thought was, “The new Mrs. Gray will find out It’s none so easy to live up to my blue china.” But when she saw a small, wispy creature half lifted from the car, insensibly her antagonism lessened. The wispy one was clearly very tired, rathof nervous, wholly unsure of herself and her position. She blushed prettily when her husband led forward his capable daughter, saying: “You’re always petting things—here’s the best ever,” forcibly joined their two hands, and introduced Uncle Peter, who was bis sister over again, only twenty years younger, and healthy as she was frail. Jenny also looked at him; a long, measuring gaze. She turned to her father, saying amiably: “Please, sir, I’d rather have the other one; it looks somehow more thriving. Uncle Peter, how will you like to be my little—’’ “Jenny!” Thunder does not begin to express the paternal voice. Mrs. Gray gasped, turned white, trembled so she could barely stand, seeing gulfs of black unhappiness ahead. Jenny looked steadfastly at the floor. Across the tense moment came a gay, boyish voice crying: “Fine! Bully! The very thing! I’ve moped so since he —” nodding at Mr. Gray —“overshadowed me with Sarah. Now, all’s right with the world; there’s a Jenny in my heaven, a Jenny who will find me troublesome.” “H-m. Two words are necessary to some bargains,” Jenny retorted, recovering herself a little. Her father shook his head at her. “I hope yon have met your match,” he said. Then to Peter: “Young man, if you’ll tame her properly it’ll be worth the best horse in my stable to you.” “Please —she ought not to be tamed, I like her best just so,” Peter Everett, honor man of his college, athlete despite his slightness and stature, said pleadingly. Then with a swift change he touched his new brother's arm saying: “Better let our Sarah rest a bit; she is ever so tired.” Jenny liked the tone, but she would have died rather than admit it —being far from a model young person. Peter had in a way turned the tables on her —she owed him and his sister, the first cause of his being there, just so much more. She set out to pay it, girl fashion, by doing her best, in a way skillfully veiled, to capture Peter. She grew to like him. Still, her vanity got an awful shock when he laid a miniature in her hand one afternoon, saying: “Hope you like her looks! Girl I’m going to marry—some day—if I make anything of myself.” “H-m! What does she say to that?” Jenny asked, her head swimming the least bit Peter looked down. “I had rather not tell you,” he said. “But —I can’t venture unless Pm surer I partly deserve her love. It's the Sarah sort —” “I don’t understand,” Jenny interrupted. He smiled at her. “I was sure you did not” be said. “If you had, being the good sort you are, you’d never—” “Don’t speak of that —I was horribly impertinent to —both of you,” Jenny confessed. Peter smiled again. “The Sarah sort is this,” he went on, “love that lives hopeless in the face of injustice. My sister and your father were betrothed in early youth. Chance brought him in the way of his old sweetheart, and the two of them were young again. Fact! I saw it —and for a minute at least hated him. Sarah had been everything to me since our mother died. Twenty years between us—yet she isn’t old. Haven’t they a right to this autumnal happiness?” “It seems they have —yet 1 can’t agree—when I think of —mother, * Jenny broke out, hiding her face in her hands with a dry soo. “We seem to be—so superfluous,” she went on bitterly. “I mean to insist that father shall send me away.’” “He will never do it Never in the world,” Peter said with a confident accent. She gave him a hard, reproachful look, so he added merrily: “He surely will not send you—because he is going to take you himself—with Sarah to make a home for you both. You shall stoy as long as you like —study or play at your pleasure —” “This is your doing!” Jenny broke in. He nodded roguishly, saying with a sly smile. “Well, you mustn’t mind owing things to Uncle Peter.” (Copyright, 1915. by the McClure Newspaper Syndicate.)