TWO UNCLES AND A NEW HOME
NCLE TOM CURTIS arrived in New York toward the end of the children's visit, good-byes were said to Miss Cartright and to Uncle Bob, and within the space of a day Jean and Giusippe were amid new surroundings. Here was quite a different type of city from Boston—a city with many beautiful buildings, fine residences, and a swarm of great factories which belched black smoke up into the blue of the sky. Here, too, were Giusippe's aunt and uncle with a hearty welcome for him; and here, furthermore, was the new position which the boy had so eagerly craved in the glass works. The place given Giusippe, however, did not prove to be the one his uncle had secured for him after all; for during the journey from New York Uncle Tom Curtis had had an opportunity to study the young Italian, and the result of this better acquaintance turned out to be exactly what Uncle Bob Cabot had predicted; Uncle Tom became tremendously interested in the Venetian, and before they arrived at Pittsburgh had decided to put him in quite a different part of the works from that which he had at first intended.
"Your nephew has splendid stuff in him," explained Mr. Curtis to Giusippe's uncle. "I mean to start him further up the ladder than most of the boys who come here. We will give him every chance to rise and we'll see what use he makes of the opportunity. He is a very interesting lad."
Accordingly, while Jean struggled with French, algebra, drawing, history, and literature at the new school in which Uncle Tom had entered her and while she and Fräulein Decker had many a combat with German, Giusippe began wrestling with the problems of plate glass making.
The factory was an immense one, covering a vast area in the manufacturing district of the city; it was a long way from the residential section where Jean lived, and as the boy and girl had become great chums they at first missed each other very much. Soon, however, the rush of work filled in the gaps of loneliness. Each was far too busy to lament the other, and since Uncle Tom invented all sorts of attractive plans whereby they could be together on Saturday afternoons and Sundays the weeks flew swiftly along. There were motor trips, visits to the museums and churches of the city, and long walks with Beacon wriggling to escape from the leash which reined him in.
Uncle Tom's home was much more formal than Uncle Bob's. It stood, one of a row of tall gray stone houses, fronting a broad avenue on which there was a great deal of driving. It had a large library and a still larger dining-room in which Jean playfully protested she knew she should get lost. But stately as the dwelling was it was not so big and formidable after all if once you got upstairs; on the second floor were Uncle Tom's rooms and a dainty little bedroom, study, and bath for Jean. On the floor above a room was set apart for Giusippe, so that he might stay at the house whenever he chose. Saturday nights and Sundays he always spent at Uncle Tom's; the rest of the time he lived with his uncle and aunt.
To Giusippe it was good to be once more with his kin and talk in his native language; and yet such a transformation had a few months in the United States made in him that he found that he was less and less anxious to remain an Italian and more and more eager to become an American. His uncle, who had made but a poor success of life in Venice, and who had secured in his foster country prosperity and happiness, declared there was no land like it. He missed, it is true, the warm, rich beauty of his birthplace beyond the seas, and many a time talked of it to his wife and Giusippe; but the lure of the great throbbing American city gripped him with its fascination. It presented endless opportunity—the chance to learn, to possess, to win out.