'So you heard some of it,' she laughed quietly, relenting. 'And I hope the Crack you speak about is in your head, not in mine.'
'It's everywhere,' he said with his grave humour.
'That's the trouble, you see; one never knows—'
Then, seeing that she was looking anxiously at the walls of the house and at the roof, he dropped his teasing and came back to solid earth again. 'And how soon do you expect her?' he asked in his most practical voice. 'When does she arrive upon the scene?'
'Why, Paul, I've already told you twice! You really are getting more absent-minded every day. Joan comes to-morrow, or the day after—she's to telegraph which—and stays here for as long as she can manage—a fortnight or so, I expect. She works herself to death, I believe, in town with those poor children, and I want her to get a real rest before she goes back.'
'Waifs, aren't they?' he asked, picking up the thread of the discourse like a thing heard in a dream, 'lost children of the slums?'
'Yes. You'll see them for yourself probably, as she has some of them down usually for a day in the country. One can be of use in that way—and it's so nice to help. Dick, you know, was absorbed in the scheme. You will help, won't you, when the time comes?'
He promised; and they went in together to tea.
CHAPTER XX
'THIS is him,' cried Jonah breathlessly, pointing with a hand that wore ink like a funeral glove. 'I've got him this time. Look!' And he waved a half-sheet of paper in his uncle's face.
'I've made one too—oh, a beauty!' echoed Toby; 'and I haven't made half such a mess as you.' Three of her fingers were in mourning. A crape-like line running from the nose to the corner of the mouth, lent her a certain distinction. She, too, waved a bit of paper in the air.
'Mine's the real Jack-of-the-Inkpot though, isn't he, Uncle Paul?' exclaimed the boy, leaving the schoolroom table, and running up to show it.
'They're all real—as real as your awful fingers,' decreed Paul.
He had been explaining how to make the figure of the Ink Sprite that leaves blots wherever he goes, blackens penholders and fingers, and leaves his crawly marks across even the neatest page of writing. Two blots and a line—then fold the paper. Open it again and the ink has run into the semblance of an outlandish figure with countless legs and arms, and a fantastic head; something between a spider, a centipede, and a sprite.
'It's Jack-of-the-Inkpot,' he told them. 'Half the time he does his dirty work invisibly, and if he touches blotting paper—he vanishes altogether.'
Jonah skipped about the room, waving his hideous creation in the air. Toby, in her efforts to make a still better one, almost climbed into the inkstand. Nixie sat on the window-sill, dangling her legs and looking on.
'Very little ink does it,' explained Paul, frightened at the results of his instruction. 'You needn't pour it on! He works with the smallest possible material, remember!' His own ringers were no longer as spotless as they might have been.
'Look!' shouted Jonah, standing on a chair and ignoring the rebuke. 'There he goes—just like a black spider flying!' He let his half-sheet drop through the air, ink running down its side as it fell, while Toby watched with the envy of despair.
Paul pounced upon the wriggling figure just in time to prevent further funeral trappings. He turned it face downwards upon the blotting paper.
'Oh, oh!' cried the children in the same breath; 'it's drank him up!'
'Drunk him up,' corrected Paul, relieved by the success of his manoeuvre. 'His feet touched the blotting-paper, you see.'
A pause followed. 'You promised to tell us his song, please,' observed Nixie from her perch on the window-sill.
'This is it, then,' he answered, looking round at the smudged and solemn faces, instantly grown still. 'To judge by appearances you know this Sprite better than I do!
I dance on your paper,
I hide in your pen,
I make in your ink-stand
My black little den;
And when you're not looking
I hop on your nose,
And leave on your forehead
The marks of my toes.
When you're trying to finish
Your "i "with a dot,
I slip down your finger
And make it a blot;
And when you're so busy
To cross a big "T,"
I make on the paper
A little Black Sea.
I drink blotting-paper,
Eat penwiper-pie,
You never can catch me,
You never need try!
I hop any distance,
I use any ink!
I'm on to your fingers
Before you can wink.'
Paul's back was to the door. He was in the act of making up a new verse, and declaiming it, when he was aware that a change had come suddenly over the room. It was manifest from the faces of the children. Their attention had wandered; they were looking past him—beyond him.
And when he turned to discover the cause of the distraction he looked straight into the grey eyes of a woman—grave-faced, with an expression of strength^ and sweetness. As he did so the opening words of verse four slipped out in spite of themselves:—
'I'm the blackest of goblins,
I revel in smears—'
He smothered the accusing statement with a cough that was too late to disguise it, while the grey eyes looked steadily into his with a twinkle their' owner made no attempt to conceal. The same instant the children rushed past him to welcome her.
'It's Cousin Joan! 'they cried with one voice, and dragged her into the room.
'And this is Uncle Paul from America began Nixie.
'And he's crammed full of sprites and things, and sees the wind and gets through our Crack, and —and climbs up the rigging of the Night' cried Jonah, striving to say everything at once before his sisters.
'And writes the aventures of our Secret S'iety,' Toby managed to interpolate by speaking very fast indeed.
'He's Recording Secre'ry, you see,' explained Nixie in a tone of gentle authority that brought order into the scene. 'Cousin Joan, you know,' she added, turning gravely to her uncle, 'is Visiting I'spector.'
'Whose visits, however, are somewhat rare, I fear,' said the new arrival, with a smile. Her voice was quiet and very pleasant. 'I hope, Mr. Rivers, you are able to keep the Society in better order than I ever could.'
The introduction seemed adequate. They shook hands. Paul somehow forgot the signs of mourning he wore in common with the rest.
'Cousin Joan has a real Society in London, of course,' Nixie explained gravely, 'a Society that picks up real lost children.'
'A-filleted with ours, though,' cried Jonah proudly.
''ffiliated, he means,' explained Nixie, while everybody laughed, and the boy looked uncertain whether to be proud, hurt, or puzzled, but in the end laughing louder than the rest.
When Paul was alone a few minutes later, the children having been carried off shouting to receive the presents their 'Cousin' always brought them on her rare visits from London,