“Just the thing!” I ejaculated.  Five minutes later I had telegraphed Helen my acceptance of her invitation, and had mentally selected books enough to busy me during a dozen vacations.  Without sharing Helen’s belief that her boys were the best ones in the world, I knew them well enough to feel assured that they would not give me any annoyance.  There were two of them, since Baby Phil died last fall; Budge, the elder, was five years of age, and had generally, during my flying visits to Helen, worn a shy, serious, meditative, noble face, with great, pure, penetrating eyes, that made me almost fear their stare.  Tom declared he was a born philanthropist or prophet, and Helen made so free with Miss Muloch’s lines as to sing:—­

    “Ah, the day that thou goest a-wooing,
    Budgie, my boy!”

Toddie had seen but three summers, and was a happy little know-nothing, with a head full of tangled yellow hair, and a very pretty fancy for finding out sunbeams and dancing in them.  I had long envied Tom his horses, his garden, his house and his location, and the idea of controlling them for a fortnight was particularly delightful.  Tom’s taste in cigars and claret I had always respected, while the lady inhabitants of Hillcrest were, according to my memory, much like those of every other suburban village, the fairest of their sex.

Three days later I made the hour and a half trip between New York and Hillcrest, and hired a hackman to drive me over to Tom’s.  Half a mile from my brother-in-law’s residence, our horses shied violently, and the driver, after talking freely to them, turned to me and remarked:—­

“That was one of the ‘Imps.’”

“What was?” I asked.

“That little cuss that scared the hosses.  There he is, now, holdin’ up that piece of brushwood.  ’Twould be just like his cheek, now, to ask me to let him ride.  Here he comes, runnin’.  Wonder where t’other is?—­they most generally travel together.  We call ’em the Imps, about these parts, because they’re so uncommon likely at mischief.  Always skeerin’ hosses, or chasin’ cows, or frightenin’ chickens.  Nice enough father an’ mother, too—­queer, how young ones do turn out.”

As he spoke, the offending youth came panting beside our carriage, and in a very dirty sailor-suit, and under a broad-brimmed straw hat, with one stocking about his ankle, and two shoes, averaging about two buttons each, I recognized my nephew, Budge!  About the same time there emerged from the bushes by the roadside a smaller boy in a green gingham dress, a ruffle which might once have been white, dirty stockings, blue slippers worn through at the toes, and an old-fashioned straw-turban.  Thrusting into the dust of the road a branch from a bush, and shouting, “Here’s my grass-cutter!” he ran toward us enveloped in a “pillar of cloud,” which might have served the purpose of Israel in Egypt.  When he paused and the dust had somewhat subsided, I beheld the unmistakable lineaments of the child Toddie!