"And you didn't think of running away and pretending you knew nothing about it, or blaming it on the maid?"
"Now, Uncle Fred—as if I'd be so dishonorable!"
"Well, I might, if I had such an ogre for an uncle as yours appears to be! I shouldn't fancy being ground to sausages!"
"Like Andy Daly's pig was, I guess! I must tell you about him, but there's something else to ask you first—something very important! Since you're the good fairy, you ought to grant me three wishes but I'll let you off with one."
"I'll not insist on granting the three until I hear Number One—Here goes! One, two, three—"
"Can I—may I—join the Happy-Go-Luckys?" implored Alene in an impressive voice, with clasped hands.
"The Happy-Go-Luckys! You're sure you don't mean the Ku Klux Klan? Hark, there's Kizzie coming to announce dinner. Come along and you can tell me all about it while we eat."
She took his arm with a mock fine-lady air, and walked beside him with mincing steps across the hall to the dining-room.
It was a square apartment with windows opening upon a green vista of gardens, now shut away by latticed blinds, through which the fresh spring air found way.
The bay window was filled with immense potted palms; another window led to a balcony where baskets with myrtle and other vines hung round like a heavy green curtain. The room was finished in light colored woodwork. A square rug in a pattern of tiny green and white tiles partly covered the polished floor; in the center stood a cosy round table, whose snowy napery and old silver and china were lit by a bronze lamp with an ornamental shade that resembled a gorgeous peony.