The Star People

Uncle Henry sat on the porch of “Seven Oaks” Cottage, watching the new moon sink into the woods across Sand Lake. The ripples of the motor-boat that had carried “Sister” and “The Children’s Father” away from the dock had gone from the glassy water. Over across the lake, at Pentecost station, they would catch the ten o’clock train, to be gone a week. Uncle Henry had urged “Sister” to go. He had said he was perfectly sure of being able to look after Peter and Paul and Betty for just seven days, but now that “Sister” was really gone Uncle Henry felt the size of the task he had undertaken. Of course he wasn’t alone. There was big, wholesome Katy, the maid. “Competent Katy,” he had at once named her to himself on his arrival two weeks before. The sleeping, eating, and dressing of twin ten-year-old boys and a seven-year-old girl would go on as usual without Uncle Henry’s assistance. In the daytime he planned to take them fishing, berry-picking, sailing, and bathing. Target-practice with Peter and Paul’s air-rifle would help, too, and there would be walks in the woods, and up to Brighton’s farm house for the milk every evening. But between supper and bed was a gap that Uncle Henry thought might be hard to fill. He must think of some games. He didn’t want to be a poor companion for his adored niece and nephews for even an hour of the time. Uncle Henry blew a cloud from his pipe and watched it eddy slowly away, filtering through the leaves of the oak-branches at the side of the porch. Then he looked up to the vaporous band of the milky way. Stars hung in it, sparkling. It was like a chiffon streamer with tiny diamond spangles—or a cloud of smoke, blown, with sparks, from the pipe of Pan. You will see right away that Uncle Henry was a poet, even if Pan’s pipe wasn’t the smoking kind. It might have been, as easy as not. Uncle Henry was wondering whether this last fancy might be made into a poem for his college paper, when the children’s voices floated up from the beach.