ering eyes.

"You shall have something to eat, love!" his mother murmured. "I guess
your voyage in the packing-box ship made you hungry."

"Do you s'pose Uncle Toby would have a gun?" asked Ted again.

"If there is one in his house _you_ can't have it, my dear," objected
Mrs. Martin.

"But I could have the spinning wheel, couldn't I?" asked Janet.

"Yes, I suppose so. But maybe there isn't one," her mother answered.

"If there is we can play steamboat!" cried Ted, getting quickly over his
disappointment about a possible gun. "A spinning wheel is just the thing
to steer a make-believe steamer with!"

"You're not going to have my spinning wheel for your old steamboat!"
declared Janet.

"Hush, children!" their mother warned them. "I haven't the least idea
what is in Uncle Toby's house, that he should be so mysterious about it,
and be in such a hurry for your father to come and take charge."

"Is Uncle Toby mysterious?" asked Janet.

"Well, yes. He says he hopes the collection will not be too much for us
to manage," went on Mrs. Martin, with another look at the letter.

"A collection of what?" Ted wanted to know.

"That's just it--Uncle Toby doesn't say," his mother replied. "We shall
have to wait until your father makes the trip to Pocono."

"Oh, may we go?" begged the two Curlytops at once.

"We'll see!" was the way in which Mrs. Martin put them off. "I wish your
father were here so we could talk over this queer letter from Uncle
Toby."

"I wis'--I wis' I had suffin' t' _eat_!" put in Trouble wistfully.

"And so you shall have, darling!" exclaimed his mother. "It is nearly
time for lunch, and daddy will soon be here. Then we'll see what he says."

And what Mr. Martin said after, at the lunch table, he had read Uncle
Toby's letter was:

"Hum!"

"What do you think of it?" asked his wife.

"I think it's as queer as he is," said the father of the Curlytops,
smiling. "Uncle Toby is a dear old man, but very queer. So he wants me to
come and take charge of his 'collection,' does he? It's strange that he
doesn't say what his collection is."

"Maybe it's postage stamps," suggested Ted. Once he had started to make a
collection like that but he had given it up.

"And maybe it's a collection of--money!" said Janet.

"That would be very fine!" laughed her father. "But though Uncle Toby is
well off, I hardly think he has a collection of money lying around his
old mansion. However, I suppose I must go and see