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I know'd yer'd got one er two warnin's sence I'd come yere wid yer, an' I 'llowed it were on account ob me, kase dem ar Sykeses is monstrous bad folks when dey gits mad, an' ole Marse Granville, he war powerful mad at me findin' a home here wid my own relations.
"Land, o' course we'll all go," Mis' Amanda Toplady comfortably settled it, "an' take Emerel a deboo present, civilized. The dear child." And to that many of us gladly assented, Timothy, big Amanda's little husband, going so far as to add: "I do vum, the Sykeses feels the post-office like it was that much oats." A day later Timothy's opinion seemed, he thought, to be verified.
He has secured my willing attention, and is not likely to be disappointed of a considerable audience. We live in vocal times, when small birds make melody on every bough. The old book-collectors were a taciturn race the Bindleys, the Sykeses, the Hebers. They made their vast collections in silence; their own tastes, fancies, predilections, they concealed.
Let me go free, messieurs, and I will tell you all about him," pleaded this weeping creature, who for the sake of her own liberty was willing to give her lover up to death. But you need not be surprised at this; for I told you long ago that there can be no honor, faith, or love among thieves, let the biographers of the Jack Shepherds and Nancy Sykeses say what they please to the contrary.
And now, for the third time, she was bringing the five rollicking Sykeses to the little flat beyond Washington Square, and for the thousandth time Mr. and Mrs. Bingle wondered how such a treasure as Melissa had managed to keep out of heaven all these years. Mr.
Indeed, more than one hostess had postponed an impending tea-party or thimble party or "afternoon coffee" or "five o'clock supper" on hearing that another was planned for the same day. And now, when there were those of us anxious to "do something nice" for hard-working little Mrs. Ricker, the Sykeses had deliberately sought the forbidden ground.
With February not far away, and Uncle Joe lamentably liable to have another attack, the Bingles curtailed quite considerably in their preparations for the festivities in honour of the five little Sykeses. They spent but a third of the customary amount in providing presents, and they were not quite sure that they were wise in spending as much as that.
And, "Oh, you know," Calliope Marsh admitted to me later, "Mis' Sykes is rilly a great society woman. They isn't anybody's funeral that she don't get to ride to the cemet'ry." Mrs. Ricker and Kitton accepted the situation with fine philosophy. "Of course," she said, "the whole town can dance to the Sykeses' fiddlin' if they want.
"Won't you take off your things and stay awhile?" It was what he always said to them, and they always said, "Yes, thank you," following out instructions received on the way down town, and then, in some desperation, added, "Mr. Bingle," after a sententious whisper from their aunt. They were a rosy, clean-scrubbed lot, these little Sykeses.
It left him without the power to set James straight in the matter, and Uncle Joe was immediately accepted as Santy by the expectant Sykeses, all of whom revealed a tremendous interest in the avuncular absentee. They even appeared to be properly apprehensive, and crowded a little closer to the knees of the grown- ups, all the while eyeing the door at the upper end of the room.
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