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Uncle Peter told his friend that he had no desire to become a human automobile, so Dave got mad, kicked the piano on the shins and went home. An hour later Deacon Ed. Sprong, the Mayor's next-door neighbor, came in and in ten minutes he had Uncle Peter making signs to an undertaker.
From Julian he would have concealed Lady Vinsear's intention, but she had herself made him tolerably aware of it, after a fit of violent spleen against Miss Sprong, her confidante, who, seeing how the wind lay, had tried to drop little malicious hints against the favourite nephew, until the old lady had cut them short, by a peremptory order that Miss Sprong should leave the room.
Thence, thence sprong the full period of our infelicitie. The master of the mint our whilome refresher and consolation, now tooke part against vs, he thought we had a mint in our head of mischieuous conspiracies against their state. To a straiter ward were we comitted: that which we haue imputatiuely transgressed must beaunswered.
But when morning came, Sprong resumed her ascendency, and by raking up and blowing the cooled embers of her patroness' wrath, succeeded once more in fanning them to the old red heat, after which she poured vinegar upon them, and they exploded in the pungent fumes of the note which told our hero that he was not to hope, for the future, to be one day owner of a handsome fortune.
The boys were seated on two stools, in the silence of despair, and at last Cyril, who had been twirling his thumbs for half an hour, and listening to a dissertation on Armageddon, gave a yawn so portentous and prolonged that Frank suddenly exploded in a little burst of laughter, which was at once checked, when Miss Sprong observed
Deacon Sprong told Uncle Peter to drink a pint of catnip tea, take eight grains of quinine, rub the back of his neck with benzine, soak his ankles in kerosene, take two grains of phenacetine, and drink a hot whiskey toddy every half-hour before meals. Deacon Sprong volunteered to run over every half-hour and help Uncle Peter drink the toddy if it tasted bitter.
However, they were naturally graceful and well-bred, so that, in spite of the patronising empire assumed over them by the vulgar and half-educated Miss Sprong which Cyril especially was very much inclined to resent the first day or two passed by with tolerable equanimity. But this dull routine soon proved unendurable to the two lively boys.
"I think it would be profitable if your ladyship," Miss Sprong never omitted the title "would set your nephews some of Watts' hymns to learn." The nephews protested with one voice and much rebellion, but at last their irate aunt quenched the unseemly levity, and they were fairly set to work at Dr Watts Frank getting for his share "The little busy bee."
When Miss Sprong married a neighbouring farmer, Lady Vinsear had given her a handsome dowry, and refused ever to see her again, being in fact heartily tired of her malice and sycophancy, and above all, resenting the new breach which she had caused between herself and her brother's family.
Then Deacon Sprong went home, and Uncle Peter's temperature came down about ten degrees, while his respiration began to sit up and notice things. During the rest of the day every friend and relative Uncle Peter had in the world rushed in, suggested a couple of prescriptions, and then rushed out again. Aunt Martha tried them all on Uncle Peter.
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