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Updated: May 16, 2025
Meanwhile Mrs. Dodd sat on the porch and meditated. "I'd never have thought," she said to herself, "that Ebeneezer would intend that Holmes woman to have any of it, but you never can tell what folks'll do when their minds gets to failin' at the end.
Dorothy and Uncle Ebeneezer understood each other now, and she no longer wished to have the portrait moved. Before they separated for the night, Dick told them all about the midnight gathering in the orchard, which he had witnessed from afar, and which the others enjoyed beyond his expectations.
Dorothy was pale when she went into the library where Harlan was at work. He frowned at the interruption and Dorothy smiled back at him it seemed so normal and sane. "What is it, Dorothy?" he asked, not unkindly. "Oh just Mrs. Smithers's nonsense. She's upset me." "What about, dear?" Harlan put his work aside readily enough now. "Oh, the same old story about the cat and Uncle Ebeneezer.
She was not ordinarily a superstitious woman, but there was something uncanny in this open partnership with Death. "There was a diamond pin," she suggested, moodily, "worth, I should think, some fifteen or sixteen hundred dollars. Ebeneezer gave it to dear Rebecca on their wedding day, and she always said it was to be mine. Have you any idea where it is?" Mr. Bradford fidgeted.
Perkins bowed his head upon his hands for a moment; then, with a sigh, lightly dropped out of the open window. The name of Uncle Ebeneezer seemed to be one to conjure with. "Dorothy," said Harlan, "might an obedient husband modestly inquire what you have done?" "Elaine and I found Uncle Ebeneezer's diary to-day," explained Dorothy, "and the poor old soul was nagged all his life by relatives.
"You don't say so! What's become of Sally? Uncle shoo her off the lot?" "I don't know what you're talking about," answered Dorothy, with a fruitless effort to appear matronly and dignified. "If by 'uncle' you mean Uncle Ebeneezer, he's dead." "You don't tell me! Reaped at last, after all this delay! Then how did you come here?" "By train," responded Dorothy, enjoying the situation to the utmost.
The small Rebecca was under the sofa, tempering the pleasure of life for Claudius Tiberius, while young Ebeneezer, having found a knife somewhere, was diligently scratching the melodeon. "Just look," said Mrs. Holmes, in delighted awe, as Dorothy entered the room. "Don't make any noise, or you will disturb Ebbie. He is such a sensitive child that the sound of a strange voice will upset him.
"What a dear old man!" said Dorothy. "He's lonely and we must have him come up often." "Do you think," asked Harlan, "that I look like Uncle Ebeneezer?" "Indeed you don't!" cried Dorothy, "and that reminds me. I want to take that picture down." "To burn it?" inquired Harlan, slyly.
Ebeneezer writ several times to us all that he didn't feel like havin' no more company, but Rebecca's relatives was all of a forgivin' disposition an' never laid it up against him. We all kep' on a-comin' just the same." "Tell them," cried Dorothy her eyes unusually bright and her cheeks burning, "that we've got smallpox here, or diphtheria, or a lunatic asylum, or anything you like.
The portrait in the parlour gave her no light upon the subject, though she studied it earnestly. The face was that of an old man, soured and embittered by what Life had brought him, who seemed now to have a peculiarly malignant aspect. Dorothy fancied, in certain morbid moments, that Uncle Ebeneezer, from some safe place, was keenly relishing the whole situation.
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