Content saw that for some reason she had gained his momentary attention, and she followed up her advantage. “Go quickly, and call Aunt Ruth. If you cannot find her bring somebody—the first person you can see.” Then she sat him down upon the floor, still wistfully regarding him lest this strange combination of tenderness and wrath, in the form of a boy, should develop some new and more untoward quality as well.
But she need not have feared. Beside the quiet command of her eye, his ear had caught the words: “Are you badly hurt, poor grandma?” uttered in a sympathetic voice by the “roaring crippler,” and he was completely at sea. So he walked slowly out of the room, but less in obedience to her wish than because he was puzzling to understand how this Melville, who was his own cousin and lived here in America, could by any possibility be the grandson of the “Witch of Endor,” who, he was perfectly sure, belonged by good rights at his uncle’s great book shop in Munich. So perplexed, indeed, was he by this problem that he walked straight into the legs of portly “Fritzy Nunky.”
“Hey, small sir! And so after waking up thy poor guardian with thy noisy racing over the stairs thou wouldst walk him down like a nine-pin! Hey?” The jolly uncle swung his nephew to his shoulder, and marched away through the passage to the open door at its end.
When they came to the sunlight, he cried, “And pray where was thy valet this morning? Surely, there is something out of common with this!” The great hand caught hold of the escaping waist frill and tucked it into hiding.
“But, Fritzy Nunky, I forgot. They want you, the folks do. The roaring crippler, and the lovely-minded girl, and the ‘Witch of Endor.’ I reckon I’ve about settled her, though! So you won’t have her no more ‘to pay.’ Ain’t you awful glad?”
By many unfortunate experiences Uncle Fritz had learned that he could not always rejoice when called upon to do so by his small nephew, and he promptly inquired, with some misgiving, “What do you mean, child?”
Fritz, junior, recognized the change from the tender “thou” to the sterner “you,” which with his guardian “meant business,” and he answered, instantly:
“I’ve pounded the old woman in there pretty hard, I reckon; and the girl said for you to come quick.”
“O Fritzy! more mischief?” demanded the uncle, reproachfully. Then he put the little boy down and ordered him to lead the way.
So Mr. Fritz Pickel’s introduction to old lady Capers was made under circumstances which neither that devotee of conventionality nor the courteous gentleman would have preferred. But one glance of his keen eyes showed him that the case was far too serious for any ceremony, and the expression of them as they rested upon the strangely attired and prostrate figure was one that his little nephew never forgot.