It was just a month since that fateful telegram had exploded in their midst, and already it seemed to the young mistress like a lifetime. A month—and Fritz, senior, had had the care of these children for years! How had he ever managed and yet retain his jollity? He not only endured them, but he seemed actually wretched at the thought of his long journey into South America, which would take him away from them for a few weeks. Then the thought recurred of his advice about Melville: “Just love him.” Ah! it must be this “just loving” that made all the difference.
“I would love them, too; I should be glad to—if they would only keep still long enough!” ejaculated the perplexed woman.
Fritzy heard her, and was glad to have the silence broken.
“What did you say, Aunt Ruthy?”
“I said— O Fritzy! Is something always happening to thee or thy sisters? Is there no such thing as quiet any more?”
The child looked gravely into the troubled face above him. “Why, yes, Auntie; I am quiet, ain’t I? They ain’t nothin’ ‘happened’ to me this whole, endurin’ day. Now, Octave, she’s settled; an’ Paula, she don’t never do anything not ezactly proper, so Fritzy Nunky says. Christina doesn’t do anything bad at all. I reckon it’ll be all right, Aunt Ruthy, now.”
Ruth smiled. Yet he comforted her also, for there was such a world of affection in his big blue eyes, as he lifted them to her troubled face, that her heart warmed to him. After all, though they were so vexatious, these “mixed pickles” left by her dead sister for some one to care for, did, as Uncle Fritz had predicted, “season” her life with a new interest. She would not exactly like to part with them just yet.
But her thoughts were interrupted by their arrival at the house, and the preparations for getting Octave made comfortable in her own bed-chamber.
Then the doctor came and examined the suffering girl, and reported, as a result of her prank, a broken arm and a badly sprained ankle. “And it is well she has escaped, even at that cost; she could not take a similar risk again and come out of it alive,” added the physician gravely.
Uncle Fritz was to have gone away on the morrow, but this accident deferred his departure; and over that the whole household rejoiced so heartily as almost to lose sight of the cause of the delay.