YOUR UNCLE.
The baby was growing to be no baby. She was big enough to run about the
floor, and if they had a boiled chicken for dinner, the little girl
sucked and even gnawed at the bones. The autumn had gone, and Bertha
had a long winter ulster to do her cold work in, and Max a longer and a
heavier one for his. Still, neither of them flinched. Max did not like
his work as well as he liked covering piano-forte hammers, but he liked
it better than nothing. And Bertha liked to be out of debt, and to see
Max happy. So never did she ask him to drop a trip, and never did he
ask her.
It was a light trip one evening, for the weather was disagreeable, and
unless the theatre filled them up, it would be a very poor evening's
work. As they went out of town nearly empty, Bertha came rushing out
upon the front platform to Max, and said to him, in terror, "Your uncle
and aunt are on board!"
"What?"
"Your Uncle Stephen, from New Britain, and your aunt, and they have two
of your old-fashioned German carpet-bags, two baskets and a bird-cage.
They are coming to make us a visit. He asked me very carefully to leave
them at the corner of Sprigg Court."
"Make us a visit!" cried Max, aghast. "How can we run the car?"
"I don't know that," said Bertha. "I should like to know first how they
are to get into the house."
"That, indeed," said Max; and, after a pause, "You must manage it
somehow."
That is what men always say to their wives when the puzzle is beyond
their own solution. And Bertha managed it. Fortunately for her, the
night was dark. The old uncle and aunt were quite out of their
latitude, and they didn't know their longitude. They were a good deal
dazed by the unusual experience of travel. They were very obedient when
Bertha stopped the car a full square before she came to her own house,
and said,--
"You had better get out here. I will take your baskets and the cage."
This she did, and deposited all three of the bipeds on the sidewalk.
She bade them "Good evening" even, and, when the old gentleman had at
last put his somewhat cumbrous question, "Could you kindly tell us on
which corner Mr. Max Keesler lives?" the car was gone in the darkness.
Short work that night as Bertha doffed her ulster and assumed her home
costume. For Max, he only tethered the horses, and then ran into the
house, lighted it, and waited. Bertha joined him, however, before his
uncle appeared. And leaving her in her own parlor, the guilty Max put
on his hat, walked down the avenue, and met his dazed relatives, so
that he could help them and the canary-bird and the baskets to his own
door.
"Come, Bertha, come!" he cried. "Here is Uncle Stephen and my aunt!"
"Where did you drop from, dear aunt?" And the dear old lady explained
how they had rung at the wrong door, how long the servant was in
coming, and then how badly the servant understood their English.
"But how came you there at all?" persisted Bertha.
"Oh, the conductor left us at the wrong street."
"At the wrong street!" cried Bertha. "These conductors are so careless!
But this man must have done it on purpose. What looking man was he?"
"My dear child," said her aunt, speaking in German, "you must not blame
him; he was very young and very kind; perhaps he was a new man, and did
not know. He was very kind, and carried the bird himself to the
sidewalk."
After this, mischievous Mistress Bertha did not dare say a word.
But there was no second trip that evening.
* * * * *
Nor the next evening. Nor the next. Nor the next. Nor for many evenings
more.
Max and Bertha took Uncle Stephen and their aunt to the little German
play of the Turnverein; they took them to the German opera, which, by
good luck, came to town, but they did not go in Max's car. Max took his
aunt to ride one day, and another day he took Uncle Stephen, but not in
his own car. The horses were eating their heads off, as he confessed to
Bertha, but not a wisp of hay nor a grain of oats could he or she earn
for them. One is glad to have his aunt and uncle come and see him. But
how shall the pot boil if aunt and uncle cut off the channel through
which the water flows to the pot, nay, block the wheels of the dray
which brings the coal to the fire?
At last one fatal day Uncle Stephen, as he smoked his pipe, came out,
as he was fond of doing, to the paint-shop to see Max rub down his
horses. Nay, the old man walked out into the garden, threw out the
lighted _Tabak_ which he loved so well, threw off his coat, and with a
wisp of straw rubbed down one horse himself.
"I show you how," he said. "The poor brute--you do not half groom him."
This in German.
"Ah me!" Max replied. "We must groom them well. The proverb says, 'When
the horse is to be sold, his skin must shine.'"
"Must he be sold, then, my boy?"
"Ah me! yes, he must be sold. He eats off his head. As the proverb
says, 'If the man is hungry, the beast goes to the fair.'"
"Mein Gott!" said the old man, not irreverently; "it is indeed hard
times."
"Hard times," said Max, "or I would not sell my bays. But the proverb
says, 'It is better to go afoot fat than to be starved and ride.'"
"And what do these people pay you for storing this car here, my son?"
"Pay me? They pay not a pfennig. But the proverb says, 'Better fill
your house with cats than leave it empty.'"
"Mein Gott! they should pay some rent," said the old man. "I see by the
rail they use it sometimes."
And Max said nothing.
The next day the old man returned to the charge.
"My son Max," he said, "do this company keep their car here, and pay
nothing?"
"They pay nothing," said Max. "The proverb says, 'The rich miller did
not know that the mill-boy was hungry.'"
"My son Max, let us take out the car at night, and let us drive down
town and back, and we will get some rent from them."
Guilty Max! He started as if he were shot.
"Max, my son, do you drive the horses, and I will be the boy
behind--what you call conductor."
Guilty Max! His face was fire. He bent down and concealed himself
behind the horse he was rubbing.
"What do you say, my son? Shall I not make as good conductor as my
little Bertha?"
Then guilty Max knew that his uncle knew all. But indeed the old man
had not suspected at the first. Only there had seemed to him something
natural, which he could not understand, in the face of the handsome
young conductor. But, as chance had ordered,--good luck, bad luck, let
the reader say,--early the next morning, as he smoked his pipe before
breakfast, he had walked into the paint-shop. Then he had stepped into
the car. On the floor of the car he had found his wife's handkerchief,
the loss of which she had deplored, and evident traces of birdseed from
the cage. The old man was slow, but he was sure; and a few days of rapt
meditation on these observations had brought him out on a result not
far from true.
"My son," he said, after Max had made confession, "if the business is
all right, as you say, why do we not follow it in the daytime?"
Max said that he did not like to expose Bertha to observation in the
daytime.
"But, my son, why do you not expose me to observation in the daytime?
If it is all right, I will go down town with you. I will go now."
Then Max said that, though it was all right according to the higher
law, the local law had not yet been interpreted on this subject, and he
was afraid the police would stop them.
"Ah, well, I understand," said the old man. "Let them stop us; let us
have one grand lawsuit, and let us settle it forever."
Then Max explained, further, that he had no money for a lawsuit, and
that before the suit was settled he should be penniless.
"Ah, well," said Uncle Stephen, "and I--who have money enough--I never
yet spent a kreutzer at law, and, God willing, I never will. But, my
son, let me tell you. What we do, let us do in the light. At night let
us play, let us go to the theatre, let us dance, let us sing. If this
business is good business, let us do it by daylight. Come with me. Let
us see your bureau man--what you call him--Obermeister, surintendant.
Come!" And he hauled guilty Max with him in a rival's car to the
down-town office of Mr. Beal, the superintendent.
And then the End came.