“It’s so good of you to come,” she cried, her face alight with the joy of seeing him—­“and you look so happy and well—­your trip down the bay has done you a world of good.  Ben says the ducks you sent father are the best we have had this winter.  Now tell me, dear Uncle George”—­she had him in one of the deep arm-chairs by this time, with a cushion behind his shoulders—­“I am dying to hear all about it.”

“Don’t you ‘dear Uncle George’ me until you’ve heard what I’ve got to say.”

“But you said you had the best news in the world for me,” she laughed, looking at him from under her lashes.

“So I have.”

“What is it?”

“Harry.”

The girl’s face clouded and her lips quivered.  Then she sat bolt upright.

“I won’t hear a word about him.  He’s broken his promise to me and I will never trust him again.  If I thought you’d come to talk about Harry, I wouldn’t have come down.”

St. George lay back in his chair, shrugged his shoulders, stole a look at her from beneath his bushy eyebrows, and said with an assumed dignity, a smile playing about his lips: 

“All right, off goes his head—­exit the scoundrel.  Much as I could do to keep him out of Jones Falls this morning, but of course now it’s all over we can let Spitfire break his neck.  That’s the way a gentleman should die of love—­and not be fished out of a dirty stream with his clothes all bespattered with mud.”

“But he won’t die for love.  He doesn’t know what love means or he wouldn’t behave as he does.  Do you know what really happened, Uncle George?” Her brown eyes were flashing, her cheeks aflame with her indignation.

“Oh, I know exactly what happened.  Harry told me with the tears running down his cheeks.  It was dreadful—­inexcusable—­barbarous!  I’ve been that way myself—­tumbled half-way down these same stairs before you were born and had to be put to bed, which accounts for the miserable scapegrace I am to-day.”  His face was in a broad smile, but his voice never wavered.

Kate looked at him and put out her hand.  “You never did—­I won’t believe a word of it.”

“Ask your father, my dear.  He helped carry me upstairs, and Ben pulled off my boots.  Oh, it was most disgraceful!  I’m just beginning to live it down,” and he reached over and patted the girl’s cheek, his hearty laugh ringing through the room.

Kate was smiling now—­her Uncle George was always irresistible when he was like this.

“But Harry isn’t you,” she pouted.

“Isn’t me!—­why I was ten times worse!  He’s only twenty-one and I was twenty-five.  He’s got four years the better of me in which to reform.”

“He’ll never be like you—­you never broke a promise in your life.  He gave me his word of honor he would never get—­yes—­I’m just going to say it—­drunk—­again:  yes—­that’s the very word—­drunk!  I don’t care—­I won’t have it!  I won’t have anything to do with anybody who breaks his promise, and who can’t keep sober.  My father was never so in his life, and Harry shall never come near me again if he—­”