Uncle Titus wanted to know "what sort of use a thing like that could be in a house?"
He asked it in his very surliest fashion. If they had had any motives of fear or favor, they would have been disconcerted, and begun to think they had made a mistake.
But Hazel spoke up cheerily,—
"Why, to wait on people, uncle. She's the nicest little fetch-and-carrier you ever saw!"
"Humph! who wants to be waited on, here? You girls, with feet and hands of your own? Your mother doesn't, I know."
"Well, to wait on, then," says Hazel, boldly. "I'm making her a baby-house, and teaching her to read; and Diana is knitting scarlet stockings for her, to wear this winter. We like it."
"O, if you like it! That's always a reason. I only want to have people give the real one."
And Uncle Titus walked off, so that nobody could tell whether he liked it or not.
Nobody told him anything about the Scarups. But do you suppose he didn't know? Uncle Titus Oldways was as sharp as he was blunt.
"I guess I know, mother," said Hazel, a little while after this, one day, "how people write stories."