Then we lit up, and reached home at ten o’clock. Eloise and the twins met me at the gate, scared to death. "So glad you’re safe," she cried, kissing me. "I know you’ve got a full bag, you’ve never failed, and, oh, dearie, I’ve invited a dozen ladies over to-morrow for lunch, promising quail on toast, so I hope nothing has happened." By this time one of the twins was climbing over me, shouting, "Daddy, show me old Bob White—show me old Brer Rabbit." And the other echoed, "Daddy, show me old Bob White—show me old Brer Rabbit." The bitterness of it went into me. "Quail on toast?" I cried with sarcasm. "Change it now, my dear; write them all a note at once and tell them tomcat is better, for that’s all I’ve killed to-day! Just make it tomcat on toast!" Eloise looked at me curiously. "Jack, I believe you have taken one of those cheap drinks." "One?" I said. "I drank a flask of it. I had to or faint when I saw poor old Uncle Thomas come out of the rear end of that hearse as natural as life." "Oh!" said Eloise, putting her fingers in her ears. "Come in, dearie, and I’ll give you another, poor dear!" But it was rubbed in on me that night. It was midnight when Eloise came to my room. I heard one of the twins crying. "Come here, Jack," she said laughing. "One of them wants you, has waked up crying for you." She was sitting up in bed and her lamentations were loud. At sight of me she broke out, "Daddy—you brought sister a dead cat and—and—wouldn’t—bring me—me—one!" To jolly her into good humor, as I often did, I picked her up and turned her a somersault in the bed: I was unfortunate again—that accursed cat and automobile! Accidentally her head was bumped. In blazing indignation, she sat up and spat upon me! I retreated as best I could: "Your mother will spank you for that"—I said. She quieted—ashamed: but almost instantly the other one sat up in bed, crying lustily. "What do _you_ want?" I said. "I thought you were asleep." "Tum back here," she wailed heart-brokenly, "_and let me spit on you too!_" I heard Eloise laugh. "Hang an automobile and a dead cat," I said, as I went out—"they are two Jonahs that will always smell alike to me hereafter!" *CHAPTER V* *THE SICK TREE* The going of my old grandsire was pathetic, for towards the last he lost interest in the living, in everything except the great elm he had always loved because his mother had nursed him under it. "And it is dying, Jack, just as I am going; but I do so want it to live until I am gone!" "It shall, Grandfather," I said, "it is sick, but with a little surgery I can save it. It shall live twenty years longer." The old tree, tall and beautiful even in death, was half rotted as it stood. Any violent wind was likely to snap it off. Any great storm would beat it to the earth. Every morning the old man would rise and look first of all to see if his tree was still standing.