`` Poor , lonely little fellow , '' said Uncle Walter unexpectedly . `` Jims , would you like Miss Avery to come here -- and live with us always -- and be your real aunt ? '' `` Great snakes ! '' said Jims , transformed in a second . `` Is there any chance of that ? '' `` There is a certainty , thanks to you , '' said Uncle Walter . `` You can go over to see her for a little while . Do n't talk her to death -- she 's weak yet -- and attend to that menagerie of yours over there -- she 's worrying because the bull dog and gobbler were n't fed -- and Jims -- '' But Jims had swung down through the pine and was tearing across the Garden of Spices . The Girl and the Photograph When I heard that Peter Austin was in Vancouver I hunted him up . I had met Peter ten years before when I had gone east to visit my father 's people and had spent a few weeks with an uncle in Croyden . The Austins lived across the street from Uncle Tom , and Peter and I had struck up a friendship , although he was a hobbledehoy of awkward sixteen and I , at twenty-two , was older and wiser and more dignified than I 've ever been since or ever expect to be again . Peter was a jolly little round freckled chap . He was all right when no girls were around ; when they were he retired within himself like a misanthropic oyster , and was about as interesting . This was the one point upon which we always disagreed . Peter could n't endure girls ; I was devoted to them by the wholesale . The Croyden girls were pretty and vivacious . I had a score of flirtations during my brief sojourn among them . But when I went away the face I carried in my memory was not that of any girl with whom I had walked and driven and played the game of hearts . It was ten years ago , but I had never been quite able to forget that girl 's face . Yet I had seen it but once and then only for a moment .
I had gone for a solitary ramble in the woods over the river and , in a lonely little valley dim with pines , where I thought myself alone , I had come suddenly XXXXX her , standing ankle-deep in fern on the bank of a brook , the late evening sunshine falling yellowly on her uncovered dark hair .
across at by in like over that to upon with