“Isn’t dinner ready yet, Nellie?” he asked peevishly.
“Not yet, Uncle,” said Nellie, coolly escaping from Vickers’s grasp. “Sit down here. Bob was just asking me if I did not think him very much altered in twelve years.”
The old man looked at Vickers affectionately. “Why, no,” he said, “I don’t think he has changed as much as I should expect.”
“Why, sir, you did not know me at first last night.”
“No, not just at first, though I suspected, I suspected. But your manner of speaking is different. But as I look at you now I find you wonderfully little changed. Just bring me that picture of him when he was a boy, Nellie.”
Nellie obeyed with alacrity, and returned with a faded photograph in a magnificent silver and enamel frame. It represented a stout little boy in Highland costume, in which Vickers could not see the smallest resemblance to himself. The old man, however, regarded it with tender, almost tearful eyes. “Truly the boy is father to the man,” he said. “Just the same expression, isn’t it?”
Vickers turned away with an exclamation of irritation which he could not repress, and Nellie asked maliciously,
“You do not find Bob any taller than he was when he went away, do you, Uncle?”
“Taller, Nellie? Why, of course not. Men don’t grow after they are twenty-three or four. What are you thinking of? He has filled out a good deal. That gives him an appearance of greater size. Sit down here, my boy. Nellie tells me you insisted on going to work at once. I suppose that is right, but I must admit I was a little disappointed. I had hoped for one day of your society.”
During dinner the conversation was carried on chiefly between the two men.