“Let me help you, sir,” she said, and her hands came in contact with his, and were squeezed.

“How is my sister?” She had no longer any fear in asking.

“Now, you let me through, first,” he replied, imitating an arbitrary juvenile.  “You’re as tight locked in as if you was in dread of all the thieves of London.  You ain’t afraid o’ me, miss?  I’m not the party generally outside of a fortification; I ain’t, I can assure you.  I’m a defence party, and a reg’lar lion when I’ve got the law backing me.”

He spoke in a queer, wheezy voice, like a cracked flute, combined with the effect of an ill-resined fiddle-bow.

“You are in the garden of Queen Anne’s Farm,” said Rhoda.

“And you’re my pretty little niece, are you? ‘the darkie lass,’ as your father says.  “Little,” says I; why, you needn’t be ashamed to stand beside a grenadier.  Trust the country for growing fine gals.”

“You are my uncle, then?” said Rhoda.  “Tell me how my sister is.  Is she well?  Is she quite happy?”

“Dahly?” returned old Anthony, slowly.

“Yes, yes; my sister!” Rhoda looked at him with distressful eagerness.

“Now, don’t you be uneasy about your sister Dahly.”  Old Anthony, as he spoke, fixed his small brown eyes on the girl, and seemed immediately to have departed far away in speculation.  A question recalled him.

“Is her health good?”

“Ay; stomach’s good, head’s good, lungs, brain, what not, all good.  She’s a bit giddy, that’s all.”

“In her head?”

“Ay; and on her pins.  Never you mind.  You look a steady one, my dear.  I shall take to you, I think.”

“But my sister—­” Rhoda was saying, when the farmer came out, and sent a greeting from the threshold,—­

“Brother Tony!”

“Here he is, brother William John.”

“Surely, and so he is, at last.”  The farmer walked up to him with his hand out.

“And it ain’t too late, I hope.  Eh?”

“It’s never too late—­to mend,” said the farmer.

“Eh? not my manners, eh?” Anthony struggled to keep up the ball; and in this way they got over the confusion of the meeting after many years and some differences.

“Made acquaintance with Rhoda, I see,” said the farmer, as they turned to go in.

“The ‘darkie lass’ you write of.  She’s like a coal nigh a candle.  She looks, as you’d say, ‘t’ other side of her sister.’  Yes, we’ve had a talk.”

“Just in time for dinner, brother Tony.  We ain’t got much to offer, but what there is, is at your service.  Step aside with me.”

The farmer got Anthony out of hearing a moment, questioned, and was answered:  after which he looked less anxious, but a trifle perplexed, and nodded his head as Anthony occasionally lifted his, to enforce certain points in some halting explanation.  You would have said that a debtor was humbly putting his case in his creditor’s ear, and could only now and then summon courage to meet the censorious eyes.  They went in to Mrs. Sumfit’s shout that the dumplings were out of the pot:  old Anthony bowed upon the announcement of his name, and all took seats.  But it was not the same sort of dinner-hour as that which the inhabitants of the house were accustomed to; there was conversation.