Considerable fussed, Edith is.  No wonder!  After one glance at me she flushes up and begins twistin’ the yellow silk cord nervous; but nothin’ in the way of a not guilty plea seems to occur to her.  As for Hubby, he blinks them mild eyes of his a couple of times, and then stands there placid with both hands in the pockets of his velvet coat, showin’ no deep emotion at all.

“It’s so, isn’t it?” demands Uncle.

“Ye-e-es, Uncle Jeff,” admits Edith.  “But poor Brooks could do nothing else, you know.  If he’d taken a studio outside, you would have wanted to know where he was.  And those rooms were not in use.  Really, what else could he do?”

“Mean to tell me he couldn’t get along without puttering around with those fool paints and brushes?” snorts Uncle Jeff.

“It—­it’s his life work, Uncle Jeff,” says Mrs. Bladen.

“Rubbish!” says the old boy.  “In the first place, it isn’t work.  Might be for a woman, maybe, but not for an able-bodied man.  You know my sentiments on that point well enough.  In the second place, when I asked you two to come and live with me, there was no longer any need for him to do that sort of thing.  And you understood that too.”

Edith sighs and nods her head.

“But still he goes on with his sissy paint daubing!” says Uncle.

“They’re not daubs!” flashes back Edith.  “Brooks has been doing some perfectly splendid work.  Everyone says so.”

“Humph!” says Uncle Jeff.  “That’s what your silly friends tell you.  But it doesn’t matter.  I won’t have him doing it in my house.  You thought, just because I was crippled and couldn’t get around or out of these confounded four rooms, that you could fool me.  But you can’t, you see.  And now I’m going to give you and Brooks your choice,—­either he stops painting, or out you both go.  Now which will it be?”

“Why, Sir,” says Brooks, speakin’ up prompt but pleasant, “if that is the way you feel about it, we shall go.”

“Eh?” says Uncle Jeff, squintin’ hard at him.  “Do you mean it?  Want to leave all this for—­for the one mean little room I found you in!”

“Under your conditions, most certainly, Sir,” says Brooks.  “I think Edith feels as I do.  Don’t you, Edith?”

“Ye-e-es, of course,” says Mrs. Bladen.  Then, turnin’ on Uncle Jeff, “Only I think you are a mean, hard-hearted old man, even if you are my uncle!  Oh, you don’t know how often I’ve wanted to tell you so too,—­always prying into this, asking questions about that, finding fault, forever cross and snappish and suspicious.  A waspish, crabbed old wretch, that’s what you are!  I just hate you!  So there!”

Uncle Jeff winces a little at these last jabs; but he only turns to Brooks and asks quiet, “And I suppose those are your sentiments too?”