"I have been out with Uncle Jimmie Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday,--four days of my vacation. We've been to the Hippodrome and Chinatown, and we've dined at Sherry's, and one night we went down to the little Italian restaurant where I had my first introduction to _eau rougie_, and was so distressed about it. I shall never forget that night, and I don't think Uncle Jimmie will ever be done teasing me about it. It is nice to be with Uncle Jimmie so much, but I never seem to see Uncle Peter any more. Alphonse is very careful about taking messages, I know, but it does seem to me that Uncle Peter must have telephoned more times than I know of. It does seem as if he would, at least, try to see me long enough to have one of our old time talks again. To see him with all the others about is only a very little better than not seeing him at all. He isn't like himself, someway. There is a shadow over him that I do not understand." * * * * * "Don't you think that Uncle Peter has changed?" she asked Jimmie, when the need of speaking of him became too strong to withstand. "He is a little pale about the ears," Jimmie conceded, "but I think that's the result of hard work and not enough exercise. He spends all his spare time trying to patch up Beulah instead of tramping and getting out on his horse the way he used to. He's doing a good job on the old dear, but it's some job, nevertheless and notwithstanding--" "Is Aunt Beulah feeling better than she was?" Eleanor's lips were dry, but she did her best to make her voice sound natural. It seemed strange that Jimmie could speak so casually of a condition of affairs that made her very heart stand still. "I didn't know that Uncle Peter had been taking care of her." "Taking care of her isn't a circumstance to what Peter has been doing for Beulah. You know she hasn't been right for some time. She got burning wrong, like the flame on our old gas stove in the studio when there was air in it." "Uncle David thought so the last time I was here," Eleanor said, "but I didn't know that Uncle Peter--" "Peter, curiously enough, was the last one to tumble. Dave and I got alarmed about the girl and held a consultation, with the result that Doctor Gramercy was called. If we'd believed he would go into it quite so heavily we might have thought again before we sicked him on. It's very nice for Mary Ann, but rather tough on Abraham as they said when the lady was deposited on that already overcrowded bosom. Now Beulah's got suffrage mania, and Peter's got Beulah mania, and it's a merry mess all around." "Is Uncle Peter with her a lot?"