“We can eat and work at the same time,” said Joyce, as she filled a dish with the corn, and called Jules back to the table, where he had been cutting tarletan.  “There’s no time to lose.  See what a funny grain this is!” she cried, picking up one that lay on the top of the dish.  “It looks like Therese, the fish woman, in her white cap.”

“And here is a goat’s head,” said Jules, picking up another grain.  “And this one looks like a fat pigeon.”

He had forgotten his shyness entirely now, and was laughing and talking as easily as Jack could have done.

“Jules,” said Joyce, suddenly, looking around to see that the older people were too busy with their own conversation to notice hers.  “Jules, why don’t you talk to your Uncle Martin the way you do to me?  He would like you lots better if you would.  Robard says that you get pale and frightened every time he speaks to you, and it provokes him for you to be so timid.”

Jules dropped his eyes.  “I cannot help it,” he exclaimed.  “He looks so grim and cross that my voice just won’t come out of my throat when I open my mouth.”

Joyce studied him critically, with her head tipped a little to one side.  “Well, I must say,” she exclaimed, finally, “that, for a boy born in America, you have the least dare about you of anybody I ever saw.  Your Uncle Martin isn’t any grimmer or crosser than a man I know at home.  There’s Judge Ward, so big and solemn and dignified that everybody is half way afraid of him.  Even grown people have always been particular about what they said to him.

“Last summer his little nephew, Charley Ward, came to visit him.  Charley’s just a little thing, still in dresses, and he calls his uncle, Bill.  Think of anybody daring to call Judge Ward, Bill! No matter what the judge was doing, or how glum he looked, if Charley took a notion, he would go up and stand in front of him, and say, ‘Laugh, Bill, laugh!’ If the judge happened to be reading, he’d have to put down his book, and no matter whether he felt funny or not, or whether there was anything to laugh at or not, he would have to throw his head back and just roar.  Charley liked to see his fat sides shake, and his white teeth shine.  I’ve heard people say that the judge likes Charley better than anybody else in the world, because he’s the only person who acts as if he wasn’t afraid of him.”

Jules sat still a minute, considering, and then asked, anxiously, “But what do you suppose would happen if I should say ’Laugh, Martin, laugh,’ to my uncle?”

Joyce shrugged her shoulders impatiently.  “Mercy, Jules, I did not mean that you should act like a three-year-old baby.  I meant that you ought to talk up to your uncle some.  Now this is the way you are.”  She picked up a kernel of the unpopped corn, and held it out for him to see.  “You shut yourself up in a little hard ball like this, so that your uncle can’t get acquainted with you.  How can he know what is inside of your head if you always shut up like a clam whenever he comes near you?  This is the way that you ought to be.”  She shot one of the great white grains towards him with a deft flip of her thumb and finger.  “Be free and open with him.”