Books › Blue Book v25 n01 [1917-05], 1917 › scan 58
Scan 58
Blue Book v25 n01 [1917-05], 1917
52 lines. Read by computer on 18 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1BOOK MAGAZINE
3THEY went to see Uncle Elias on a Sunday directly after the old-fashioned midday dinner. They met Luigi with his tattered violin-box at their favorite bench in Rittenhouse Square, and they walked with him over to Spruce Street and out beyond Twentieth until they stopped in front of the old house whose very drab dinginess proclaimed it the home of a Philadelphia blue-blood. No one else would have dared live in such a dingy old house.
5For Uncle Elias was certainly a blue-blood, even if he had been born of the poorer branch of the family, and even if he had developed a business genius such as no one else in the family, since the time of his ancient namesake, had had. He had made all of his own great fortune. And he boasted that he had made it without swindling anybody—that is, not anybody that he knew very well.
7It was a solemn-faced and unbending manservant who opened the door to them, and he was for closing it again at once in their faces when he saw their Sunday-best shoddiness, but Alice pushed past him and said, with all the dignity with which great ladies spoke in her storybooks: "Tell Mr. Texler that it is his niece, Miss Alice Texler."
9And they walked into a dim and darkened front parlor such as no one but a Philadelphia blue-blood could have endured.
11The manservant stood and gasped at them two or three times, and then he seemed on the point of calling another servant to watch the bric-a-brac while he went for his master, but finally he shrugged in a way that showed he was trying his best to get used to this sort of thing. Then he disappeared.
13Uncle Elias came to them finally. He came shuffling down the long hallway and into the room without a word, and without a word he stood in the double doors and peered through the gloom at their three very shadowy figures huddled down into the depths of great carved chairs. Then he pattered over to the front windows and raised a blind to let in a great, brazen flood of Sunday sunlight in which the dust-flecks from the floor danced and scintillated.
15"Now," he said in a rasping voice that was for all the world like sandpaper, "now which of you three is my niece? Come here till I look at you."
17ALICE came forward and stood in front of him, full in the blaze of sunlight. Her great brown eyes looked up steadily into his. She was perfectly poised, perfectly calm, perfectly unafraid.
19"Are you Alice Texler?" he asked.
20"Yes sir."
21"My brother's daughter?"
22"Yes sir."
23"H'mm!"
25He mused a moment with his thin lips pursed and his great, shaggy brows wrinkled down ominously over the two little darts of cold fire that were his eyes.
27"You're shabby," he said finally, "damnably shabby. Why doesn't your mother dress you better?"
29Alice did not flush. She did not feel that it was an insult. It was only one of those personal questions that older people have a habit of asking.
31"Why doesn't she?" he repeated.
33"I don't know, Uncle Elias," she said. "You see, my mother's brother takes care of us."
35"I see. And your father's brother doesn't—eh? Well, he wont. They needn't have sent you to me."
37"Nobody sent me to you," she said, still in her even, unannoyed voice. "I think they'd be too much afraid."
39A keen, grim smile of glee flashed across his sharp features.
41"Afraid, eh?" he repeated with a little cackle. "They're afraid of me, are they?"
43"Well, perhaps not afraid exactly. But you do not seem to be particularly popular with them."
45"Ah-ha! So you've heard that, have you? You've heard that I hate the whole damned crew of upstarts?"
47"No sir—that is, I did not hear that they were a damned crew of upstarts. They never said that. Perhaps you have never told them."
49The flash from his cold eyes shot at her colder and keener than ever.
51"I wonder," he mused judicially, "I wonder if you're trying to be impudent to me."
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