“Is there anything I can do to help you through the customs?” then came the nice voice of that Mr. Peter Scudder of Philadelphia from the other side of me.

“No, with much gratitude to you both; I must wait the arrival of my Uncle,” I made answer to them with my head held very high.

“Then we’ll see you at the Ritz for tea at five as per promise,” said Mr. William Raines as he walked away and left Mr. Peter Scudder, who was assisting the lady from Cincinnati to transport her very lovely dog to a handsome car which awaited her.  She also had I promised to visit from that great Ritz-Carlton hotel and she smiled in sweet friendliness to me as I stood with the letter in my hand and watched all of the friends I had found upon that ship, depart and leave me with not a place to go.  I stood for many minutes motionless and then my eyes perceived the letter in my hand.  Surely it must be opened and read.  It was from the wicked Uncle, I knew, but it might be that it was not of the cruelty that I had expected.  It would excuse him no doubt from arrival in person for the expected greeting to his relatives, Pierre and myself.

“Go to it, Bob,” I advised myself in the language I had heard Mr. Saint Louis use when he was forced to ask a nice lady, who danced with disagreeable heaviness, to trot the fox with him because of a friendship with his mother.

And this is the letter that my eyes read with astonishment, while both the good Nannette and small shivering Pierre sat with their eyes fixed upon my countenance: 

    “My dear nephew Robert: 

“Your arrival in America at this time suits me exactly.  I need you immediately in my business.  If you had been the girl, instead of the little one, I would have had to dispose of you some way—­even murder.  I have no use for women.  Leave the little crippled girl and her nurse, who I feel sure is an old fool, with my good friend Dr. Mason Burns, of 222 South 32nd St. He has cured more children of hip joint disease than any man in the world, and he will straighten her out for us and we can give her away to somebody.  I’ve written him instructions.  Leave her immediately and come down here to me on the first train.  The deal is held up without you.  Enclosed is a check for a thousand dollars.  If you are like Henry you’ll need it, but keep away from Broadway and the women.  Come on, I say, by next train. 
        Your uncle, Robert Carruthers. 
Hayesville, Harpeth.”

“The Uncle of America has come to a confusion of the sex between Pierre and me from a careless memory and the writing of my hand, which is of a great boldness, but not to be easily read,” I explained as I read the letter aloud to Pierre and Nannette.