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"Why, Ptolemy, how did you know where we were?" asked Silvia. "I was on top of the porch when you told stepdaddy about coming. I didn't tell the others. I won't bother you any. And I know how to look after Di. You won't send me back, mudder," he pleaded, looking wistfully at the foam-crested water of the little lake.
Silvia asked him if he had repeated those remarks to Beth or Rob. "Why, no," he said. "I knew you didn't want her to know, because stepdaddy said so, and I thought he wouldn't like to be called that, and I wasn't going to give Beth away to him." "You're all right, Ptolemy!" I exclaimed, for the first time awarding him approbation. Out on the veranda we met Rob.
Yet she made an end of it, and hurried away with a choke in her throat. The man stared after her angrily. "Well!" he ejaculated finally. "She's got her nerve with her. Old Himes is that gal's stepdaddy. I reckon he knows whether she's fit to work in the mills or not he hired her here. Bob, ain't Himes down in the basement right now settin' up new machines?
The flying wheel of arms and legs slacked, ran a few times, then slowly stopped, and the Polydore quintette assumed normal positions. "Halloa, stepdaddy!" A landslide composed of Emerald, Pythagoras, and Demetrius started toward me. I side-stepped and let Rob receive the charge. "Line them up now, for attention," I directed Ptolemy. "I have something to say to you all."
Wade was all the husband you ever had, and that stepdaddy was nothing but a sort of pet-name the kids had give Mr. Wade." "I told him," said Demetrius, "that stepdaddy was cross to us sometimes and not as nice as mudder, and he said " "You shut up," commanded Huldah quickly, "and let me talk." "No," I intercepted, "I'd really be interested in hearing what he told Uncle Issachar.
Johnnie knew what that meant." The words had come almost involuntarily. The old man stared at the speaker breathing hard. "What's Johnnie Consadine got to do with it?" he inquired finally. "I'm the stepdaddy of the children and Johnnie's stepdaddy too, for the matter of that and what I say goes." "Did you hire the children at the Victory?" inquired Stoddard, swiftly.
"Ptolemy," I began, "a young lady, who is a reporter for a big newspaper, has come from many miles away to write up the haunted house and the ghost, and they will be pictured out in the Sunday edition." Ptolemy's eyes glistened, and "Them Three" were instantly "at attention." "Oh, say, stepdaddy," begged the young chief, "let me play ghost right for her, just once, will you?"
To my amusement the other children followed suit and she was now "muddered" by all the Polydores. "I am glad," I remarked, "that they scorn to include me in their adoption. I wouldn't fancy being 'faddered' by the Polydores." "You won't be," Ptolemy, appearing seemingly from nowhere, assured me. "We've named you stepdaddy." "If it be possible, Silvia," I implored, "let this cup pass from me."
"Yours truly, "P. Issachar Polydore Wade." Rob's laughter was so free and spontaneous that I had to join in against my will. Ptolemy, who had seemed a little apprehensive of the verdict, looked accordingly relieved. "That's a fine letter, young man," approved Rob. "Stepdaddy ought to take you into his law firm." "No," declared Beth. "I think Ptolemy has inherited his mother's gift.
"I asked him," continued Rob, "what his motive was, and he said 'Stepdaddy didn't want Beth to know about the man-hater business, so he took that means of throwing you off the track. "I took the occasion to talk to him like a Dutch uncle, though I don't know exactly what that is. I think it was the first time anything but brute force had been tried on him.
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