r. As for
Hubby, he blinks them mild eyes of his a couple of times, and then
stands there placid with both hands in the pockets of his velvet coat,
showin' no deep emotion at all.

"It's so, isn't it?" demands Uncle.

"Ye-e-es, Uncle Jeff," admits Edith. "But poor Brooks could do nothing
else, you know. If he'd taken a studio outside, you would have wanted
to know where he was. And those rooms were not in use. Really, what
else could he do?"

"Mean to tell me he couldn't get along without puttering around with
those fool paints and brushes?" snorts Uncle Jeff.

"It--it's his life work, Uncle Jeff," says Mrs. Bladen.

"Rubbish!" says the old boy. "In the first place, it isn't work.
Might be for a woman, maybe, but not for an able-bodied man. You know
my sentiments on that point well enough. In the second place, when I
asked you two to come and live with me, there was no longer any need
for him to do that sort of thing. And you understood that too."

Edith sighs and nods her head.

"But still he goes on with his sissy paint daubing!" says Uncle.

"They're not daubs!" flashes back Edith. "Brooks has been doing some
perfectly splendid work. Everyone says so."

"Humph!" says Uncle Jeff. "That's what your silly friends tell you.
But it doesn't matter. I won't have him doing it in my house. You
thought, just because I was crippled and couldn't get around or out of
these confounded four rooms, that you could fool me. But you can't,
you see. And now I'm going to give you and Brooks your choice,--either
he stops painting, or out you both go. Now which will it be?"

"Why, Sir," says Brooks, speakin' up prompt but pleasant, "if that is
the way you feel about it, we shall go."

"Eh?" says Uncle Jeff, squintin' hard at him. "Do you mean it? Want
to leave all this for--for the one mean little room I found you in!"

"Under your conditions, most certainly, Sir," says Brooks. "I think
Edith feels as I do. Don't you, Edith?"

"Ye-e-es, of course," says Mrs. Bladen. Then, turnin' on Uncle Jeff,
"Only I think you are a mean, hard-hearted old man, even if you are my
uncle! Oh, you don't know how often I've wanted to tell you so
too,--always prying into this, asking questions about that, finding
fault, forever cross and snappish and suspicious. A waspish, crabbed
old wretch, that's what you are! I just hate you! So there!"

Uncle Jeff winces a little at these last jabs; but he only turns to
Brooks an