ey were!" laughed Janet, feeling them. "They're soaking
wet! But you're all right now, Trouble!"

"And I'm wet, too," said Teddy, coming along just then.

Together they walked back along the edge of the brook, Skyrocket
following when he found that no one was going to help him play with the
empty box, which floated ashore near the dam Teddy had made.

As she passed the place where she had dropped Uncle Toby's letter Mrs.
Martin picked up the fluttering paper.

"I nearly forgot all about this," she said. "Your father will want to
know about it. I never heard anything so strange in all my life."

"What is it?" asked Teddy.

"I'll tell you when you have dry clothes on, and we can sit down and talk
it over," his mother promised.

And when Trouble, smiling and happy, with a picture book in his hands and
dry shoes and stockings on his feet, was safe in a chair, and when Janet
and Teddy sat near her, Mrs. Martin read the letter again.

"It is from Uncle Toby Bardeen of Pocono," said the mother of the
Curlytops. "At least he is your father's uncle, but that doesn't matter.
He is an old bachelor, and lives with a distant relative, a Mrs. Watson,
in an old, rambling house."

"Does he want us to come there for the summer vacation?" asked Janet. It
was time, so she and Ted thought, to begin thinking of the summer fun.

"No, Uncle Toby doesn't say that," went on Mother Martin, as she glanced
over the pages of the letter. "What he wants is for your father to go and
take charge of everything that is in the old house--everything, that is,
except the housekeeper, Mrs. Watson. She is going off by herself, Uncle
Toby says."

"Is Uncle Toby--is he--dead, that he wants daddy to take everything in
his house?" asked Janet.

"Course not! How could he be dead and write this letter?" asked Ted.

"Well, maybe he wrote it before he died," Janet suggested.

"No, Uncle Toby isn't dead, I'm glad to say," remarked Mrs. Martin. "But
he is going away on a long voyage for his health, he writes, and he
wants daddy to come and take charge of everything in the old mansion."

"Do you s'pose there's a gun there I could have?" asked Teddy hopefully.

"I'd like an old-fashioned spinning wheel," said Janet. "Is there one of
those, Mother?"

"I wants suffin' to eat!" announced Trouble suddenly, but whether he
thought it was to be had at Uncle Toby's house or not, it is hard to say.

Teddy and Janet laughed, and Trouble looked at them with wond