a woman going to do when she is young and hearty and husky,
with the blood running through her veins at a two-forty rate, when her
orchard is in bloom, the mocking-birds are singing the night through,
and she is not really in love with anybody? The loneliness does fill
her heart full of the solution of love, and she has got to pour off some
of it into somebody's life. There is plenty of me to be both abstract
and concrete, at the same time, and I thought of Uncle Peter.

Uncle Peter Is the most explosive and crusty person that ever happened
in Glendale, and it takes all of Aunt Augusta's energy, common-sense and
force of character to keep him and the two chips he carries on his
shoulders, as a defiance to the world in general, from being in a
constant state of combustion. He has been ostensibly the Mayor of
Glendale for twenty-five years, and Aunt Augusta has done the work of
the office very well indeed, while he has blown up things in general
with great energy. He couldn't draw a long breath without her, but of
course he doesn't realize it. He thinks he is in a constant feud with
her and her sex. His ideas on the woman question are so terrific that I
have always run from them, but I concluded that it would be a good
thing for me to liquefy some of my vague humanitarianism, and help Aunt
Augusta with him, while she wrestles with the City Council on the water
question. Anyway, I have always had a guarded fondness for the old chap.

I chose a time when I knew Aunt Augusta had to be busy with his report
of the disastrous concrete paving trade the whole town had been sold out
on, and I lay in wait to capture him and the chips. This morning I
waited behind the old purple lilac at the gate, which immediately got
into the game by sweeping its purple-plumed arms all around me, so that
not a tag of my dimity alarmed him as he came slowly down the street.

"Uncle Peter," I said, as I stepped out in front of him suddenly,
"please, Uncle Peter, won't you come in and talk to me?"

"Hey? Evelina?"

"Yes, Uncle Peter, it's Evelina," and I hesitated with terror at the
snap in his dear old eyes, back under their white brows. Then I let my
eyes uncover my heart full of the elixir I had prepared for him, and
offered him as much as he could drink.

"I'm lonely," I said, with a little catch in my voice.

"Lonely--hey?" he grumbled, but his feet hesitated opposite my gate.

In about two and a half minutes I had him seated in a cushio