"It's your dear uncle, child," she said soothingly. "He has come to take you to a nice home."
"And he is going to bring you up," my father added in a wonderfully cheerful voice, born either from his own escape from responsibility or her brightened prospects. "He is going to give you everything."
Penelope was on the verge of tears, but she held them back. "I don't want everything," she said, as she strove to check her forced advance by planting her feet firmly and leaning back against my mother. "I just want to stay here till father comes."
"But your father will come to us—of course, he will come to us, Penelope," Mr. Blight cried. His hands closed on hers, he hooked an arm about her and held her very cautiously, as though he were as afraid of her as she of him. "You mustn't be frightened, my dear," he went on, and, soothed by his kindly tones, she leaned against his knee. "That's better, child." Encouraged by her half-yielding attitude, he stroked her hair. To me, watching them from the hiding of my mother's skirt, she had fallen into a magician's clutches and was being lulled by soft words into an indifference to danger.
"I'm your father's brother, child," he pursued, in his insinuating tone. "Next to him I'm nearer to you than any one else, and to me there is no one as near as he. We will try to find him together—you and I, eh? And we'll all live together in Pittsburgh. You'll like Pittsburgh—it's a very lively, pushing town."
"But I want to stay here with Davy," said Penelope in a low voice.
"With Davy?" Mr. Blight stared at her in surprise. Then he began to laugh as though he were contrasting all he could give her with Davy's humble powers. "Child—child—you don't realize what you are refusing. You don't realize what your Uncle Rufus is going to do for you. I've no one to look after—you will be the joy of a poor old bachelor's heart, won't you, now?"
He spoke as though being a poor old bachelor was quite the pleasantest possible condition, yet he rolled out the phrase twice as if to touch Penelope's heart. Remembering the only other bachelor I had ever seen, I stared at him in wonder. This other was Philip Spangler, who sat all day in the store gazing vacantly at the stove. Once I asked Stacy Shunk why he stayed there, and Stacy, lifting a warning finger, whispered: "He's jest a bachelor, Davy, an old, old bachelor." Contrasting him with Mr. Blight, I was puzzled. If it was a terrible thing to be an old bachelor, certainly he accepted the condition lightly; he was trying to arouse sympathy when it was plain that he did not need or deserve it, for evidently he was quite well satisfied with a single state, however deplorable it might come to be. Penelope was being enmeshed by unfair means, and it was hard to keep still, but there was nothing that I could do.
Now my father lifted his chin clear of the high points of his collar. "Penelope," he began, "you are fortunate—very fortunate—in having such an uncle. Mr. Blight is a prominent man, and I might say"—glancing apologetically at the guest—"a rich man." Then, meeting no contradiction, he added—"a very rich man, who can give you such advantages as would be far beyond my means, even were you my daughter."
"I don't want advantages," said Penelope, hardly above a whisper, and for want of a better resting-place she dropped her head on her uncle's shoulder and burst into tears.