“More twins?” queried Elaine, from the depths of her rocker. “Surely there can’t be any more twins?”
“I don’t know,” answered Dorothy, vaguely troubled. “Someway, I feel as though something terrible were going to happen.”
Nothing happened, however, until after luncheon, just as she had begun to breathe peacefully again. Willie saw the procession first and ran back with gleeful shouts to make the announcement. So it was that the entire household, including Harlan, formed a reception committee on the front porch.
Up the hill, drawn by two straining horses, came what appeared at first to be a pyramid of furniture, but later resolved itself into the component parts of a more ponderous bed than the ingenuity of man had yet contrived. It was made of black walnut, and was at least three times as heavy as any of those in the Jack-o’-Lantern. On the top of the mass was perched a little old man in a skull cap, a slippered foot in a scarlet sock airily waving at one side. A bright green coil closely clutched in his withered hands was the bed cord appertaining to the bed—a sainted possession from which its owner sternly refused to part.
“By Jove!” shouted Dick; “it’s Uncle Israel and his crib!”
Paying no heed to the assembled group, Uncle Israel dismounted nimbly enough, and directed the men to take his bed upstairs, which they did, while Harlan and Dorothy stood by helplessly. Here, under his profane and involved direction, the structure was finally set in place, even to the patchwork quilt, fearfully and wonderfully made, which surmounted it all.
Financial settlement was waved aside by Uncle Israel as a matter in which he was not interested, and it was Dick who counted out two dimes and a nickel to secure peace. A supplementary procession appeared with a small, weather-beaten trunk, a folding bath-cabinet, and a huge case which, from Uncle Israel’s perturbation, evidently contained numerous fragile articles of great value.
“Tell Ebeneezer,” wheezed the newcomer, “that I have arrived.”
“Ebeneezer,” replied Dick, in wicked imitation of the old man’s asthmatic speech, “has been dead for some time.”
“Then,” creaked Uncle Israel, waving a tremulous, bony hand suggestively toward the door, “kindly leave me alone with my grief.”