“Poor Mr. Perkins,” commented Dorothy, softly.
“Yes,” mimicked Harlan, “poor Mr. Perkins. I don’t see but what he’ll have to work now, like any plain, ordinary mortal, with no ‘gift’.”
“What is the Ideal, anyway?” queried Elaine, looking thoughtfully into the embers of the poet’s bedstead.
“That’s easy,” answered Dick, not without evident feeling. “It’s whatever Mr. Perkins happens to be doing, or trying to do. He fixes it for the rest of us.”
“I think,” suggested Dorothy, after a momentary silence, “that the Ideal consists in minding your own business and gently, but firmly, assisting others to mind theirs.”
All unknowingly, Dorothy had expressed the dominant idea of the dead master of the house. She fancied that the pictured face over the mantel was about to smile at her. Dorothy and Uncle Ebeneezer understood each other now, and she no longer wished to have the portrait moved.
Before they separated for the night, Dick told them all about the midnight gathering in the orchard, which he had witnessed from afar, and which the others enjoyed beyond his expectations.
“That’s what uncle meant,” said Elaine, “by ‘fixing a surprise for relations.’” “I don’t blame him,” observed Harlan, “not a blooming bit. I wish the poor old duck could have been here to see it. Why wasn’t I in on it?” he demanded of Dick, somewhat resentfully. “When anything like that was going on, why didn’t you take me in?”
“It wasn’t for me to interfere with his doings,” protested Dick, “but I do wish you could have seen Uncle Israel.”
At the recollection he went off into a spasm of merriment which bid fair to prove fatal. The rest laughed with him, not knowing just what it was about, such was the infectious quality of Dick’s mirth.