He snatched it up in his puffy hands and let out a squeal of rage that was exactly like the "eeee-yeee!" of a pig caught under a gate. I laughed at him and started toward the door.
"Wait!" he called after me. "Wait, Julian!"
I turned, and was amazed to see that his face was creased and folded into a kind of porkine smile. "Don't go. Come back and sit down. This"—he picked up the summons and flung it aside—"doesn't mean anything. I should have had to settle the case eventually, anyhow. I'm sorry for what I said—now be a good boy, come back—and let's be friends."
I had nothing to lose, and although I did not like my uncle, his remarkable change of manner excited my curiosity and impelled me to accept his invitation. It was as simple a thing as returning to my chair that altered the whole probable course of my life.
My uncle sang a tune to the title: Blood Is Thicker Than Water. It was a sweet, subtle melody, and well-calculated to fall pleasantly on my ears. I was broke, and I was in love; Uncle Alfred was rich and lonely; and after all, I was his nearest blood relative—the logical person to inherit his fortune. With a hint of tears in his shoe-button eyes he described to me the misunderstanding and ridicule that had cursed his life. He had no friends, a woman's love he had never known, even his own relations (among them, his brother, my father) had refused him their sympathies. In short, it was a melancholy recital. Late in the afternoon he began to plead with me to invite Annette to his house, and nothing would do but that we must stay to dinner.
From the moment of Annette's arrival, Uncle Alfred's manner changed again; he stopped his moaning, and became on the instant a picture of pathetic and almost absurd gallantry. In every way possible he showed Annette that she was welcome—that she was much more than welcome.
As the evening wore on, he became more and more outspoken in his praises both for Annette and for me; we were his beloved, long-lost niece and nephew, the darlings of his old age sent by Providence to comfort his final years. In leaving him, the last thing that he said to us was: "Remember, children—I have great plans for you! Great plans! Great plans for us all!"
When we were out on the street, and the door closed behind us, I asked Annette, "Well, what do you think of him?"
"The poor old man," she said. "It's not his fault he's so fat."
"Perhaps not entirely," I said. "But to judge by the way he acted at dinner, he had something to do with it."
"You mustn't be too critical—he seems awfully fond of you—"
"Yes," I said, as much to myself as to her. "And I would very much like to know why."
I was a long time finding the answer—if I ever did.
We saw Uncle Alfred frequently in the days that followed. I do not recall exactly how he first introduced the subject of his farm, but each time we visited him he talked more and more enthusiastically of it. Strictly as a farm, it was nothing, he told us—only a few acres in the hills, up-state. An old house, dating from Revolutionary times, that had been restored and modernized, a small orchard, a plot or two of vegetables. But the pigs! That was the attraction for him. He boasted that he had six of the finest pens of pedigreed hogs in the country, and when he spoke of them, it was with the same admiration and affection that a hunter lavishes upon his dog.
Shortly after our first meeting, Uncle Alfred insisted that Annette and I spend a
