“You did not do it,” I cried. “My father said so!”
He gave a little gasp, and fluttered his hand across his eyes, sweeping in a wonderful way the evil out of them.
“Ah!” he said, “if your father, young gentleman, would whisper to you where Abel lies hidden! He knows now.”
He stepped back, with a strange, wintry smile on his lips, stopped, seemed about to speak, waved his hand to me, and was gone.
“Dicky, Dicky,” cried Mr. Quayle, “you’re the son of your father; but, dear me, not so good a lawyer!”
CHAPTER III.
UNCLE JENICO.
That same evening Uncle Jenico arrived. I was just put to bed at the time, but he came and stood by me a little before I went to sleep and dreamt of him. He was not the least grown from his place in my memory—only, to my wonder, a little more shabby-looking than I seemed to recollect. The round gold spectacles were there, and the big beaver hat, and the blue frock coat, and the nankeen trousers, and the limp—all but the first and last a trifle the worse for wear. His smile, however, was as cherubic, his despatch-box as glossy, his walking-stick as stout as ever; and he nodded at me like a benevolent Mandarin.
“Only we two left, my boy,” he said. “Poor papa, dear papa! He’s learnt by now the secret of perpetual motion.”
It was an odd introduction. I cried a little, and, moved by his kindness, clung to him.
“There!” he said, soothing me. “That’s all right. We are going to be famous friends, we are. We’ll invent things; we’ll set the Thames on fire, we will.”