“You will surely never go without me, Alice?”

“You will never stay behind, if I do go, Kate,” said she, looking back at me laughingly.  “But make haste, I shall gain mamma over in five minutes; and we must be quick, if we are to reach Uncle John’s before tea-time.”

Uncle John,—­even now that long years have passed, so long that it seems to me as if I had gone into another state of existence, as if I were not the same person as in those times,—­even now the thought of him makes my heart beat quick and the blood thrill more rapidly through my veins.  He was the delight of my childhood; far better, he was the comfort and support of my after years.  Even as a child, I knew, knew by some intuitive perception, that Uncle John was not happy.  How soon I learned that he was a disappointed man I cannot tell; but long before I grew up into womanhood I was conscious that he had made some mistake in life, that some cloud hung over him.  I never asked, I never talked on the subject, even to Alice; there was always an understanding between us that we should be silent about that which each of us felt with all the certainty of knowledge.

But if Uncle John was unhappy himself, who was there that he did not make happy?  No one who came near him,—­from his nieces whom he petted and spoiled, down to the little negroes who rolled, unrebuked, over the grass before his window in summer, or woke him on a Christmas morning with their shrill “Christmas gift, Massa John!” Not that Uncle John was a busybody, troubling himself about many things, and seeking out occasions for obtruding his kindnesses.  He lived so secluded a life in the old family-house on the outskirts of Newport, (we were a Kentucky family,) as to raise the gossiping curiosity of all new residents, and to call forth the explanatory remark from the old settlers, that the Delanos were all queer people, but John Delano was the queerest of them all.

So Uncle John spent his time between his library and his garden, while Old Aunt Molly took upon herself the cares of the household, and kept the pantry always in a condition to welcome the guests, to whom, with Kentucky hospitality, Uncle John’s house was always open.  Courteous he was as the finest gentleman of olden times, and sincerely glad to see his friends, but I have thought sometimes that he was equally glad to have them go away.  While they were with him he gave them the truest welcome, leaving garden and books to devote himself to their entertainment; but I have detected a look of relief on his face as he shut the gate upon them and sought the shelter of his own little study, that sanctum which even we children were not allowed to enter except on special occasions, on a quiet winter evening, or, perhaps, on as quiet a summer morning.