He said
your absence would make no difference to his plans; that he never let
nothing do that. He come to pay a visit and he should pay one."

"Yes," said Silvia feebly. "That sounds like Uncle Issachar."

"I told him to make himself perfectly at home; that every one did that
to this place, and he said he would. I'd just slicked up the big front
room upstairs and I seen to it that he had everything all right. I
cooked the best dinner I knew how, and he said it was the first white
man's meal he had eat since his ma died, so I found out what she used
to cook and fed him on it. Them three kids and him eat like they was
holler. I guess if Polly hadn't took them away your grocery bill would
'a looked like Barb'ry Allen's grave.

"Well, as I was saying, your uncle he eat till he got over his
grouches, and like enough he'd be here eating yet, if he hadn't got a
telegraph to hit the line for home, some big business deal, he said,
and I guess it was a great deal, for he licked his chops and smacked
his lips over it, and he give me a ten dollar bill to get a new dress
and each of Them Three one dollar fer candy."

"The old tightwad!" I exclaimed. "It was your cooking, sure, that made
him loosen up that way."

"Tightwad nothing!" she declared indignantly. "You won't think he was
tight-wadded when you read this here letter he left for you. He told
me what was in it, and I've just been busting to tell it to Beth, but
I waited for you to know it first."

With great excitement Silvia opened the letter, read it, gasped,
re-read it, and then in consternation handed it to me.

"Read it aloud, Lucien," she bade. "Maybe I can believe it then."

This was the letter.

"My dear Niece:

"I was sorry not to see you, but glad to learn that, as every wise
and good woman should do, you are raising a fine family--a family
of _sons_, which is what our country most needs. Your son
Pythagoras informed me that you had taken your oldest child,
Ptolemy, and your youngest, Diogenes, with you, I am glad you left
three such promising samples for me to see.

"As you have five sons, I have, agreeable to my promise, placed in
your name in the First National Bank of your city the sum of
twenty-five thousand dollars.

"Your affectionate uncle,
"Issachar Innes."

"Huldah," I asked, "did you tell him the Polydores were our
children?"