"Well I swan!" said the merchant in the treble voice which I remembered so well. "This is Bart and Peabody! How are you?"
"Pretty well," I answered, my uncle being too slow of speech to suit my sense of propriety. "How is Sally?"
The two men laughed heartily much to my embarrassment.
"He's getting right down to business," said my uncle.
"That's right," said Mr. Dunkelberg. "Why, Bart, she's spry as a cricket and pretty as a picture. Come up to dinner with me and see for yourself."
Uncle Peabody hesitated, whereupon I gave him a furtive nod and he said "All right," and then I had a delicious feeling of excitement. I had hard work to control my impatience while they talked. I walked on some butter tubs in the back room and spun around on a whirling stool that stood in front of a high desk and succeeded in the difficult feat of tipping over a bottle of ink without getting any on myself. I covered the multitude of my sins on the desk with a newspaper and sat down quietly in a chair.
By and by I asked, "Are you 'most ready to go?"
"Yes—come on—it's after twelve o'clock," said Mr. Dunkelberg. "Sally will be back from school now."
My conscience got the better of me and I confessed about the ink bottle and was forgiven.
So we walked to the big house of the Dunkelbergs and I could hear my heart beating when we turned in at the gate—the golden gate of my youth it must have been, for after I had passed it I thought no more as a child. That rude push which Mr. Grimshaw gave me had hurried the passing.