“Uncle, you will decide to help me, I know.”

She said it with a staggering assurance of manner.

“How do you know?” cried Anthony.

“Why do you carry so much money about with you in bags, uncle?”

“Hear it, my dear.”  He simulated miser’s joy.

“Ain’t that music?  Talk of operas!  Hear that; don’t it talk? don’t it chink? don’t it sing?” He groaned “Oh, Lord!” and fell back.

This transition from a state of intensest rapture to the depths of pain alarmed her.

“Nothing; it’s nothing.”  Anthony anticipated her inquiries.  “They bags is so heavy.”

“Then why do you carry them about?”

“Perhaps it’s heart disease,” said Anthony, and grinned, for he knew the soundness of his health.

“You are very pale, uncle.”

“Eh? you don’t say that?”

“You are awfully white, dear uncle.”

“I’ll look in the glass,” said Anthony.  “No, I won’t.”  He sank back in his chair.  “Rhoda, we’re all sinners, ain’t we?  All—­every man and woman of us, and baby, too.  That’s a comfort; yes, it is a comfort.  It’s a tremendous comfort—­shuts mouths.  I know what you’re going to say—­some bigger sinners than others.  If they’re sorry for it, though, what then?  They can repent, can’t they?”

“They must undo any harm they may have done.  Sinners are not to repent only in words, uncle.”

“I’ve been feeling lately,” he murmured.

Rhoda expected a miser’s confession.

“I’ve been feeling, the last two or three days,” he resumed.

“What, uncle?”

“Sort of taste of a tremendous nice lemon in my mouth, my dear, and liked it, till all of a sudden I swallowed it whole—­such a gulp!  I felt it just now.  I’m all right.”

“No, uncle,” said Rhoda:  “you are not all right:  this money makes you miserable.  It does; I can see that it does.  Now, put those bags in my hands.  For a minute, try; it will do you good.  Attend to me; it will.  Or, let me have them.  They are poison to you.  You don’t want them.”

“I don’t,” cried Anthony.  “Upon my soul, I don’t.  I don’t want ’em.  I’d give—­it is true, my dear, I don’t want ’em.  They’re poison.”

“They’re poison to you,” said Rhoda; “they’re health, they’re life to me.  I said, ’My uncle Anthony will help me.  He is not—­I know his heart—­he is not a miser.’  Are you a miser, uncle?”

Her hand was on one of his bags.  It was strenuously withheld:  but while she continued speaking, reiterating the word “miser,” the hold relaxed.  She caught the heavy bag away, startled by its weight.

He perceived the effect produced on her, and cried; “Aha! and I’ve been carrying two of ’em—­two!”

Rhoda panted in her excitement.

“Now, give it up,” said he.  She returned it.  He got it against his breast joylessly, and then bade her to try the weight of the two.  She did try them, and Anthony doated on the wonder of her face.