“Who’ll live here with you in this big house, first Uncle Joe?”
“Oh, I suppose my colored ‘boys’ only; as before you came,” was his low-toned answer.
“Nobody else?” she continued, in tones equally low.
He sighed: “Who else could, lassie?”
“Why, me! He’s got so many, and it’s only across the square. And Red Kimono, who’s your own cousin, you know. Shall we?”
“If you will, darling,” answered the old man, with moistened eyes.
“Then when papa and mamma come back from that far off red-pickley country maybe they’d be glad to stay, too. Can’t ’lectrickellers find places to earn money in this Baltimore, Uncle Joe?”
“Be sure that your Uncle Joe and I will find your electrician a fine place, little one; and we’ll call Red Kimono by her real name, Cousin Desire, because she was my mother’s twin sister’s child; and we’ll send for big Bridget to wait upon this real Tom, Dick, and Harry combination of youngsters; and—anything you like!” he answered, so gleefully that even Peter scarcely recognized him.
“Will you? Will you? Oh, I love you—I love you! I love you both, both. But isn’t it the twiniest kind of world ever was! Papa and Uncle Joe are twins; and your mamma and Red Kimono’s mamma were twins; and Tom and Dick are twins; and big Bridget’s folks are twins; and—Oh, oh, there’s my darling, red-headed Michael going by! I must call him in, I truly must! Won’t he be the gladdest boy ever lived, to know all about my new cousins that I never saw coming to live and play with us in the square? He hasn’t any child to his house and you haven’t any child but me to yours, Uncle Joe; and the line-fence is down; so nothing’s to hinder Michael and me making another pair of twins, is there?”
Nobody prevented the child’s movement to bring in her first child-friend in that strange city to which she had come, and presently entered the jolly lad, flushed and breathless and a trifle unkempt, as was his habit, but with such a manly bearing and such a world of good-fellowship beaming from his freckled face, that the new Uncle Joe instantly rejoiced in the prospect of such a comrade for his own small lads.