"You will give them up at once--immediately."
"On the contrary," I said very gently, "seeing the Crown can have no use for one, I shall keep them both to dream over when the nights are long and lonely."
Lisbeth actually stamped her foot at me, and I tucked "them" into my pocket.
"How did you know they--they were here?" she inquired after a pause.
"I was directed to a tree with 'stickie-out' branches," I answered.
"Oh, that Imp!" she exclaimed, and stamped her foot again.
"Do you know, I've grown quite attached to that nephew of mine already?" I said.
"He's not a nephew of yours," cried Lisbeth quite hotly.
"Not legally, perhaps; that is where you might be of such assistance to us, Lisbeth. A boy with only an aunt here and there, is unbalanced, so to speak; he requires the stronger influence of an uncle. Not," I continued hastily, "that I would depreciate aunts--by the way, he has but one, I believe?" Lisbeth nodded coldly.
"Of course," I nodded, "and very lucky in that one--extremely fortunate. Now, years ago, when I was a boy, I had three, and all of them blanks, so to speak. I mean none of them ever read to me out of the history book, or helped me to sail boats, or paddled and lost their---- No, mine used to lecture me about my hair and nails, I remember, and glare at me over the big tea-urn until I choked into my teacup. A truly desolate childhood mine. I had no big-fisted uncle to thump me persuasively when I needed it; had fortune granted me one I might have been a very different man, Lisbeth. You behold in me a horrible example of what one may become whose boyhood has been denuded of uncles."