We knew what a wildly hilarious time we'd29 have splashing out small talk to the collection of human bric-a-brac always to be found at Uncle Gilbert's, but what is one going to do when the richest old gink in the family waves a beckoning arm?

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I'll tell you what one is going to do—one is going to take to one's o'sullivans, beat it rapidly to a choo-choo, and float into Uncle Gilbert's presence with a business of being tickled to death—that's what one is going to do.

You know Nature has a few immutable laws, and one is that even a rich old uncle must in the full course of time pass on and leave nephews and nieces. Leave them what? Ah! that's it! Where's that timetable?30

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Hawleysville is about forty miles away on the P. D. & Q., and it is some burg. Uncle Gilbert wrote it all himself.

Uncle Gilbert has nearly all the money there is in the world. Every time he signs a check a national bank goes out of existence. He tried to count it all once, but he sprained his wrists and had to stop.

On the level, when he goes into a bank all the government bonds get up and yell, "Hello, Papa!"

When he cuts coupons it's like a sheep shearing.

He has muscles all over him like a prizefighter just from lifting mortgages.

When Peaches and I finally reached the31 Hawley mansion on the hill we found there a scene of great excitement. Old and distant relations were bustling up and down the stone steps, talking in whispers; servants with scared faces and popping eyes were peeping around the corner of the house, and in the roadway in front of a sobbing automobile stood Uncle Gilbert and Aunt Miranda, made up to look like two members of the Peary expedition at the Pole.

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After the formal greetings we were soon put hep to the facts in the case.

"You see, John," bubbled Aunt Miranda, while a pair of green goggles danced an accompaniment on her nose, "your Uncle Gilbert loaned the money to a man to open a garage32 in Hawleysville. But automobilists never got any blowouts or punctures going through here because there isn't a saloon in the town, so the garage failed and the man left town in an awful hurry, and all your Uncle Gilbert got for the money he loaned 

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