“Yes, my Uncle Joe,” said Pete. Jonaique looked helplessly across at John the Clerk. John the Clerk puckered up his mouth as if about to whistle, and then said, in a faltering way, “Well, I can't really say I've ever heard tell of your Uncle Joe before, Capt'n.” “No?” said Pete, with a look of astonishment. “Not my Uncle Joseph? The one that left the island forty years ago and started in the coach and cab line? Well, that's curious. Where's he living? Bless me, where's this it is, now? Chut! it's clane forgot at me. But I saw him myself coming home from Kimberley, and since then he's been writing constant. 'Send her across,' says he; 'she'll be her own woman again like winking.' And you never heard tell of him? Not Uncle Joey with the bald head? Well, well! A smart ould man, though. Man alive, the lively he is, too, and the laughable, and the good company. To look at that man's face you'd say the sun was shining reg'lar. Aw, it's fine times she'll be having with Uncle Joe. No woman could be ill with yonder ould man about. He'd break your face with laughing if it was bursting itself with a squinsey. And you never heard tell of my Uncle Joe, of Scotland Road, down Clarence Dock way? To think of that now!” They went off with looks of perplexity, and Pete turned into the house. “They're trying to catch me; they're wanting to shame my poor lil Kirry. I must keep her name sweet,” he thought. The church bells had begun to ring, and he was telling himself that, heavy though his heart might be, he must behave as usual. “She'll be going walking to church herself this morning, Nancy,” he said, putting on his coat, “so I'll just slip across to chapel.” He was swinging up the path on his return home to dinner, when he heard voices inside the house. “It's shocking to see the man bittending this and bittending that.” It was Nancy; she was laying the table; there was a rattle of knives and forks. “Bittending to ate, but only pecking like a robin; bittending to sleep, but never a wink on the night; bittending to laugh and to joke and wink, and a face at him like a ghose's, and his hair all through-others. Walking about from river to quay, and going on with all that rubbish--it's shocking, ma'am, it's shocking!” “Hush-a-bye, hush-a-bye!” It was the voice of Grannie, low and quavery; she was rocking the cradle. “You can't spake to him neither but he's scolding you scandalous. 'I'm not used of being cursed at,' I'm saying, 'and is it myself that has to be tould to respect my own Kitty?' But cry shame on her I must when I look at the lil bogh there, and it so helpless and so beautiful. 'Stericks, you say? Yes, indeed, ma'am, and if I stay here much longer, it's losing myself I will be, too, with his bittending and bittending.”