“Pickel! Not Pickel—not my daughter Lydia’s Pickel?” cried the dear old lady, finding this second shock almost too much for even her credulity. It had been enough to receive that unexpected telegram from Mr. Fritz Pickel, the uncle and guardian of her dead daughter’s family, announcing that he had, after a five years’ absence, returned to America, and had brought all his wards with him, and expected, as a matter-of-course, to leave them with their maternal grandmother while he went journeying about on a six months’ business tour.
The telegram had not mentioned any time for arriving, but the Kinsolvings had taken it for granted that it would not be before the following day.
“Ho! I suppose I am,” laughed Fritz, junior. “Fritzy Nunky says we’re quite a jar full. He calls us ‘mixed pickles,’ and says he don’t know which he likes best, the sweet or the sour. I say, are you my grandmother, truly? ’Cause you don’t look like grandmothers mostly does. Lotta Hartmann, she had a grandmother, and, my! I wouldn’t ha’ kissed her for a cent. But I’ll kiss you, if you like.”
Had Grandmother Kinsolving known it, she was receiving the highest compliment little Fritz ever bestowed upon any one; and she certainly did “like,” for she opened her arms wide and the boy flew to them with a swift response of love in his generous little heart.
So there was welcome number two, or three; for the farmer at the barn may be counted upon as having given his in his undemonstrative way.
CHAPTER II.
Such a hubbub as ensued in the old homestead on the top of Deer Hill mountain, when, a half-hour later, “Fritzy Nunky” arrived with his other charges, would baffle description; for the kindly German was one of those overflowing, effervescing mortals who go bouncing through the world as if their only mission were to “stir up” other quieter folk. But it was such a happy, generous stirring up that they who had once experienced it generally desired to have it again.
He was idolized by his nieces and his small nephew, to whom he stood in place of the half remembered parents, who had perished in a steamship disaster the last time they had left Germany to visit the mother’s native land. For their sakes he had never married, lest his devotion to them should have to be less; and he had persistently done his utmost to spoil them, so far as unlimited indulgence tends that way.
Only to Paula he was a trial,—Paula, the eldest of the brood, who had artistic and literary tendencies; and who, having reached the mature age of sixteen, felt that she had wisdom and experience sufficient to sit in judgment on all her “betters.” Strangely enough, “Fritzy Nunky” appeared to agree with her, and if there was one person of whom his sunshiny nature stood in awe it was of Fräulein Paula Pickel.
On Paula’s pretty features, then, there rested an expression of grave disapproval during that supper which followed the arrival of the stranger grandchildren; for Uncle Fritz was so lost in admiration of his lovely old hostess, and so relieved to find The Snuggery such a delightful home for his darlings, that he was even more boisterous than ever.