It was quite a long ride to Exeter.  They did not get there until tea-time, but that made it seem all the pleasanter.  Willy never forgot how peaceful and beautiful that little, elm-shaded village looked with the red light of the setting sun over it.  There was aunt Annie, too, in the prettiest blue-sprigged, white cambric, standing in her door watching for them; and she was so surprised and delighted to see Willy, and they had tea right away, and there were berries and cream, and cream-tartar biscuits and frosted cake.

Uncle Frank, Willy thought, was going to be the nicest uncle he had.  There was something about the tall, curly-headed, pleasant-eyed young man which won his boyish heart at once.

“Glad to see you, sir,” uncle Frank said in his loud, merry voice; then he gave Willy’s little slim hand a big shake, as if it were a man’s.

He was further prepossessed in his favor when, after tea, he begged to take him over to the store and show him around before he went to bed.  Grandma had suggested his going directly to bed, as he must be fatigued with the journey, but uncle Frank pleaded for fifteen minutes’ grace, so Willy went to view the store.

It was almost directly opposite uncle Frank’s house, and uncle Frank and his father kept it.  It was in a large old building, half of which was a dwelling-house where uncle Frank’s parents lived, and where he had lived himself before he was married.  The store was a large country one, and there was a post-office and an express office connected with it.  Uncle Frank and his father were store-keepers and postmasters and express-agents.

The jolly new uncle gave Willy some sticks of peppermint and winter-green candy out of the glass jars, in the store-window, and showed him all around.  He introduced him to his father, and took him into the house to see his mother.  They made much of him, as strangers always did.

“They said I must call them Grandpa and Grandma Perry,” he told his own grandmother when he got home.

He told her, furthermore, privately, when she came upstairs after he was in bed to see if everything was all right, that he thought Annie had shown very good taste in marrying uncle Frank.  She told of it, downstairs, and there was a great laugh.  “I don’t know when I have taken such a fancy to a boy,” uncle Frank said warmly.  “He is so good, and yet he’s smart enough, too.”

“Everybody takes to him,” his grandmother said proudly.

In a day or two Willy wrote a letter to his mother, and told her he was having the best time that he ever had in his life.

Willy was only seven years old and had never written many letters, but this was a very good one.  His mother away down in Ashbury thought so.  She shed a few tears over it.  “It does seem as if I couldn’t get along another day without seeing him,” she told Willy’s father; “but I’m glad if it is doing the dear child good, and he is enjoying it.”