"Your arrival in America at this time suits me exactly. I need
you immediately in my business. If you had been the girl,
instead of the little one, I would have had to dispose of you
some way--even murder. I have no use for women. Leave the
little crippled girl and her nurse, who I feel sure is an old
fool, with my good friend Dr. Mason Burns, of 222 South 32nd
St. He has cured more children of hip joint disease than any
man in the world, and he will straighten her out for us and we
can give her away to somebody. I've written him instructions.
Leave her immediately and come down here to me on the first
train. The deal is held up without you. Enclosed is a check
for a thousand dollars. If you are like Henry you'll need it,
but keep away from Broadway and the women. Come on, I say, by
next train.
Your uncle, Robert Carruthers.
Hayesville, Harpeth."

"The Uncle of America has come to a confusion of the sex between
Pierre and me from a careless memory and the writing of my hand, which
is of a great boldness, but not to be easily read," I explained as I
read the letter aloud to Pierre and Nannette.

It took me just one hour by the clock, sitting there on the pile of
steamer wraps with the small Pierre in the hollow of my arm, to
explain and translate the sense of that letter to old Nannette, and I
feel sure she would have been sitting upon that spot yet immovable
rather than let me depart from her if I had not put all of my time and
force upon the picturing to her of a Pierre who could come down with
her later to me in a condition to run through the gardens of Twin