y on relations as I
am, would you turn down the only one that ever showed up?

"Excuse me if I don't get the cues right," says I; "but--but this has
been put over a little sudden. Course I'll take Mrs. Leary's word. If
she says you're my Uncle Bill, that goes. Anyway, you can give me a line
on--on my folks, I suppose?"

Yes, he admits that he can; but he don't. And I will say for him that he
states his case smooth enough, smilin' that catchy smile of his, and
tappin' me friendly on the knee. But when he's all through it amounts to
this: He needs the loan of a couple of hundred cash the worst way, and
he wants to be put next to a few plutes that are in the market for new
trolley franchises. If I can boost him along that way, it'll relieve his
mind so much that he'll be in just the right mood to go into my personal
hist'ry as deep as I care to dip.

"Gee!" says I. "But this raisin' a fam'ly tree comes high, don't it?
Besides, I'd have to get Mother Leary's O. K. on you first, you know."

"Naturally," says he. "And any time within the next day or so will
answer. Suppose I drop around again, or look you up at your quarters?"

"Better make it at the house," says I. "Here's the street number. Some
evenin' after seven-thirty. I--I'll be thinkin' things over."

And as I watches him swing jaunty through the door I remarks under my
breath to nobody in partic'lar: "Uncle Bill, eh? My Uncle Bill! Well,
well!"

You can be sure too that my first move is to sound Mother Leary. She
says he's the one, all right, and I gathers that she gave him the
tongue-lashin' she'd been savin' up all these years. But I don't stop
for details. If I've really had an uncle wished on me, it's up to me to
make the best of it, or find out the worst. But somehow I ain't so
chesty about havin' dug up a relation. I don't brag about it to Martha
when I go home. In fact, Martha has fam'ly troubles of her own about
now, you remember. I finds her weepy-eyed and solemn.

"They've been gone more than a week," says she, "Zenobia and that
reckless Kyrle Ballard. Pretty soon they will be coming back, and
then----"

"Well, what then?" says I.

"I've been packing up to-day," says she, swabbin' off a stray tear from
the side of her nose. "I have engaged rooms at the Lady Louise. I
suppose you will be leaving too."

"Me?" says I.

It hadn't struck me that Aunt Zenobia's getting married was goin' to
throw us all out on the street. But Aunt Martha had it dope