“A gas mask!  Gracious king!  What on earth?”

Jed sighed. “’Twould be consider’ble protection when Gabe Bearse dropped in and started talkin’,” he drawled, solemnly.

October came in clear and fine and on a Saturday in that month Jed and Barbara went on their long anticipated picnic to the aviation camp at East Harniss.  The affair was one which they had planned together.  Barbara, having heard much concerning aviation during her days of playing and listening in the windmill shop, had asked questions.  She wished to know what an aviation was.  Jed had explained, whereupon his young visitor expressed a wish to go and see for herself.  “Couldn’t you take Petunia and me some time, Mr. Winslow?” she asked.

“Guess maybe so,” was the reply, “provided I don’t forget it, same as you forget about not callin’ me Mr. Winslow.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.  Petunia ought to have reminded me.  Can’t you take me some time, Uncle Jed?”

He had insisted upon her dropping the “Mr.” in addressing him.  “Your ma’s goin’ to call me Jed,” he told her; “that is to say, I hope she is, and you might just as well.  I always answer fairly prompt whenever anybody says ‘Jed,’ ’cause I’m used to it.  When they say ‘Mr. Winslow’ I have to stop and think a week afore I remember who they mean.”

But Barbara, having consulted her mother, refused to address her friend as “Jed.”  “Mamma says it wouldn’t be respect—­respectaful,” she said.  “And I don’t think it would myself.  You see, you’re older than I am,” she added.

Jed nodded gravely.  “I don’t know but I am, a little, now you remind me of it,” he admitted.  “Well, I tell you—­call me ’Uncle Jed.’  That’s got a handle to it but it ain’t so much like the handle to an ice pitcher as Mister is.  ‘Uncle Jed’ ’ll do, won’t it?”

Barbara pondered.  “Why,” she said, doubtfully, “you aren’t my uncle, really.  If you were you’d be Mamma’s brother, like—­like Uncle Charlie, you know.”

It was the second time she had mentioned “Uncle Charlie.”  Jed had never heard Mrs. Armstrong speak of having a brother, and he wondered vaguely why.  However, he did not wonder long on this particular occasion.

“Humph!” he grunted.  “Well, let’s see.  I tell you:  I’ll be your step-uncle.  That’ll do, won’t it?  You’ve heard of step-fathers?  Um-hm.  Well, they ain’t real fathers, and a step-uncle ain’t a real uncle.  Now you think that over and see if that won’t fix it first-rate.”

The child thought it over.  “And shall I call you ’Step-Uncle Jed’?” she asked.

“Eh? . . .  Um. . . .  No-o, I guess I wouldn’t.  I’m only a back step-uncle, anyway—­I always come to the back steps of your house, you know—­so I wouldn’t say anything about the step part.  You ask your ma and see what she says.”

So Barbara asked and reported as follows: 

“She says I may call you ‘Uncle Jed’ when it’s just you and I together,” she said.  “But when other people are around she thinks ‘Mr. Winslow’ would be more respectaful.”