"Oh, no," said Flossie, "I don't half understand it, but it does sound so frightful, that I'm so scared, I need to have you be scared, too."
"Well, then," Uncle Harry replied, "if it will help you to know it, I'll admit that my teeth are chattering, and shivers are running up and down my spine!
"I thought at first that it was the draft across this piazza, but perhaps, after all, it was caused by what you were telling me."
When, at last, he had heard the story, he was full of disgust that any boy, and his friends, should have been guilty of such a contemptible act, and his sympathy for the little girl was deep and sincere.
"She will need rest and quiet to-morrow," he said, "and you three little friends will be kind, I think, if you stay rather closely here, and help, in some quiet way, to amuse her."
"We will," said Dorothy, "I'll let her read my new fairy book if she'd like to. She could lie in the hammock, and do that."
"I'll keep the hammock swinging," said Nancy.
"And I'll give her my new box of candy I just brought home," said Flossie.
"That's right," said Uncle Harry, "and for your sweet promises of kindness toward the child who has suffered so much to-day I'll remind you that on day after to-morrow I shall give myself the pleasure of taking you all to the fair. I promise you a fine time."
He turned to look over his shoulder, and laugh at their wild little cries of delight.