"Then I won't need to take my winter clothes at all."
"I think it will be well for you to take your warm cloak; for sometimes a cold wind called a 'norther' swoops down on the city, and then the beautiful palm trees and the flowers suffer, and for a few days the children hurry to school bundled up in the warmest clothes they can find. We who see so much snow and ice for several months at a time would look upon such a cold snap as fine, bracing weather; but those southern people do not enjoy it at all."
"I wish Wilhelmina lived in San Antonio."
"So do I, little one. You would have great times together, though I really do not know what you would do in a house with seven boys. They are just about the liveliest little crowd I have ever met, and Wilhelmina is equal to any one of them."
"Is she seven years old, too, Uncle?"
"Not quite seven. Her birthday is in January, so you are nearly eight months older than she is; but she is large and strong for her age. No one but her mother ever thinks of calling her by her full name. Even her father calls her Willie, and I have heard the boys say 'Billy' or 'Bill' when their mother is not around."
"I hope I shall know them all some day. They must have the best times together. They need never invite anyone to spend the day with them."
"No, indeed; though they do sometimes have what they term, 'The Gathering of the Clan,' when their forty-five or fifty first cousins, with their fathers and mothers, pay a visit to Sunnymead, as Wilhelmina's home is called."
"Forty-five or fifty first cousins! Why, Uncle! And I haven't one!"
"Perhaps you have some, dear, that we know nothing about. Your father has a brother and a sister of whom he has heard nothing for many years. He was not always a Catholic, you know; and when he became one, your Aunt Bertha would have no more to do with him. Your Uncle Alfred was in Europe at the time. He was not one to trouble himself much about religion and would not care what your father did about it; but he has doubtless been roaming from place to place over there, and any letters which your father has written him have probably gone astray. At all events, men, as a rule, are not great letter-writers, you know."