"I'm not going to feel any better," said Uncle Joe, quite cheerfully.
"I may hang on for a long time but I'm not going to be any better.
This is the finish for me, Mary. And I'd like you to know that I
didn't come back here to die on your hands without first giving my
children a chance to take me in. I--I tried them once more."

"You--you went to them again?" she cried. Melissa laid the second
blanket across the bed more gently than the first.

"Yes," said Mr. Hooper, his thick eyebrows meeting in a scowl of
anger. "Yes, I talked with all three of them this morning before I
came here. I told them that I was sick and--and--" He choked up
suddenly as Mrs. Bingle began to pat his lean old knuckles with her
soft, warm hand.

"I wouldn't talk about it if I were you, Uncle Joe."

"But I--I want to talk about it," he said, with an effort. "First I
wrote a nice, kind letter to each one of them. Then I called them up
on the telephone and told them all how sick I was, that I couldn't
last much longer, that I didn't want to die in the street, or a
charity hospital, or--the police station. That confounded Christmas
Carol of yours made me relent. I read the thing the other night after
you went to bed. They all asked me where I was and said they would
send an ambulance to take me to Bellevue, and that was the best they
could do for me. After the holidays, when they had a little more time,
they might possibly send me to a sanitarium if I--if I showed any
signs of improvement. That was all there was to it, Mary. I told them--
each one of 'em--that I washed my hands of them, and they could all
go to the devil. They won't do it, of course. People like that never