“Come in, come in!”
His plump, curiously white hand, with a very large signet ring gleaming on the little finger, waved them into the room. It was not at all like any room at Squires. It was hung with a blue paper powdered all over by large silver stars, and there was a round table bearing an aspidistra in a pot on a ruffled lace mat, several books, and an enormous Bible.
A lighted gas-jet hung from the middle of the ceiling and illuminated the only two pictures, one above the mantelpiece, and the other one at the far end of the room.
Both were coloured lithographs, framed alike in black-and-gilt wood, one representing a fleshly Jewish woman drawing water at a well, the other one depicting the prophet Daniel, erect and haughty, amongst a crouching company of innocuous-looking lions.
“You haven’t changed, Uncle Alfred, not one bit.”
“Unless it’s to put on flesh, I daresay not. Well, I can’t say as much for you, Rose. You look fully your age,” said Uncle Alfred cheerfully.
“Well, I’ve been through a lot, one way and another. And my age is only twenty-five, so I don’t mind if I do look it.”
Mrs. Smith had early impressed upon Rose the advisability of “standing up to” Uncle Alfred, and her exhortation had fallen upon receptive ears. Quite instinctively, the old habit of years ago resumed its sway.
Uncle Alfred turned his attentive, shrewd eyes, light green, like a cat’s, upon little Cecil. His teeth were so prominent that the front ones jutted out far beyond his lower lip. Even when he was serious, as he usually was, and when, as now, he smiled—a rather slow, wary smile—almost the whole row was exposed.
“How old are you, young sir?”