couldn't read it because he had mislaid his glasses. So he got Louis to read it to him. Louis says the thing was a cablegram from some place in France--he can't remember the name--and that it was the queerest message. It ran like this:

Time almost ripe. Have you the necessary papers? Sail next month.

When his uncle heard this he became terribly excited and began to walk up and down the room very fast. But when Louis asked him what it all meant, all he would say was: "It is not for you to inquire or for me to explain just yet, Monsieur!"

Louis says his uncle often calls him "monsieur," and he can't understand why. He thinks it's generally when the old gentleman forgets himself or is excited. But it makes Louis feel very queer.

After that his uncle wouldn't say anything more, but Louis says he began to rummage around through all his letters and papers, and looked through all his books and in all the closets, evidently hunting for something he couldn't find. And the more he hunted, the more nervous and excitable he grew. Every once in a while he would exclaim, "Ah, why is not that Yvonne here?" By bedtime he was pretty well worked up, for it was evident that he couldn't find what he was searching for. Louis tried and tried to get him to explain and let him help in the hunt. But the old gentleman would only mutter, "No, no! That cannot be!" Louis says he doesn't think his uncle slept all night, because he heard him rummaging about in all sorts of places till nearly morning. To-day he seems terribly used up. He just sits in his chair by the window, staring out and watching for his daughter to come. Louis says he had to go down to the village at eight o'clock last night with a telegram, telling his Aunt Yvonne to come home at once.

How mysterious it all sounds! Louis declares he can't imagine what it means, and it makes him very uneasy, because he is almost certain that it is something concerning himself. He says he sometimes thinks his uncle is planning to send him to France before he gets much older, to complete his studies there and to become a French citizen, and he doesn't want to go.

My idea was that perhaps he had some relatives there and that they wanted him to come back. But Louis says his uncle has often told him that he hasn't any relatives living. And if he had, he says there's no reason why there should be all this secrecy about it. But he can't understand who the people are with whom his uncle is corresponding.

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