ion trip to some place where the
fishing facilities would be to our liking. However, summer vacation
time like our plans was yet far, vague and dim.

[Illustration: Uncle Issachar]

While I was putting on my overcoat, Silvia had gone to the window and
was looking pensively at the vacant house next to ours.

"I fear," she said abruptly and irrelevantly, "that we are destined
to receive no part of Uncle Issachar's fortune."

Uncle Issachar was a wealthy but eccentric relative of my wife. He had
made us no wedding gift beyond his best wishes, but he had then
informed us that at the birth of each of our prospective sons he
should place in the bank to Silvia's account the sum of five thousand
dollars. We had never invited him to visit us or made any overtures in
the way of communication with him, lest he should think we were
cultivating his acquaintance from mercenary motives.

While I was debating whether the lament in Silvia's tone was for the
loss of the money or the lack of children, she again spoke; this time
in a tone which had lost its languor.

"There is a big moving van in front of the house next door. At last we
will have some near neighbors."

"Are they unloading furniture?" I asked inanely, crossing to the
window.

"No; course not," came cheerfully from Huldah, who had come in to
remove the dishes. "Most likely they are unloading lions and tigers."

As I have already intimated, Huldah was a privileged servant.

"They are unloading children!" explained Silvia, in a tone implying
that Huldah's sarcastic implication would be infinitely more
preferable. "The van seems to be overflowing with them--a perfect
crowd. Do you suppose the house is to be used as an orphan asylum?"

"I think not," I assured her as I counted the flock. Five children
would seem like a crowd to Silvia.

"Boys!" exclaimed Huldah tragically, as she joined us for a survey.
"I'll see that they don't keep the grass off our lawn."

Late that afternoon I opened the outer door of the dining-room in
response to the rap of strenuously applied knuckles.

A lad of about eleven years with the sardonic face of a satyr and
diabolically bright eyes peered into the room.

"We're going to have soup for dinner," he announced, "and mother wants
to borrow a soup plate for father to eat his out of."

Silvia stared at him aghast. She seemed to feel something compelling
in the boy's personnel, however, and she went to the china closet and
brought fo