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 cushioned rocker on the south side of the porch.  Jasper had given us both a mint julep, and Uncle Peter was much Jess thirsty than he had been for a long time.  Aunt Augusta is as temperate in all things as a steel ramrod.

“You see, Uncle Peter, I needed you so that I just had to kidnap you,” I said to him, as he wiped his lips with a pocket-handkerchief, as stiffly starched as was his wife herself.

“Why didn’t you go over and live in James’s hennery—­live with James—­hey?” he snapped, with the precision of a pistol cap.

To be just, I suppose Aunt Augusta’s adamant disposition accounts, to some extent, for Uncle Peter’s explosive way of thinking and speaking.  A husband would have to knock Aunt Augusta’s nature down to make any impression whatever on it.  Uncle Peter always has the air of firing an idea and then ducking his head to avoid the return shot.

“His house is so full, and I need a lot of space to carry on my work,” I answered him, with the words I have used so often in the last two weeks that they start to come when the Petunia asks me if I want waffles or batter-cakes for supper.