She was looking out of the bow window of the big room spread with a blue rose-patterned carpet, at the green glory of the park, lying in the sun like another and much more beautiful carpet with a pattern of trees on it.
Then they went down to tea. Such a house—full of beautiful things! But the children hadn’t time to look at them then, and I haven’t time to tell you about them now.
I will only say that the dining-room was perfect in its Turkey-carpet-and-mahogany comfort, and that it had red curtains.
‘Will you please pour the tea, Miss Caroline?’ said Mrs. Wilmington, and went away.
‘I’m glad we haven’t got to have tea with her, anyway,’ said Charles.
And then Uncle Charles came in. He was not at all what they expected. He could not have been what anybody expected. He was more shadowy than you would think anybody could be. He was more like a lightly printed photograph from an insufficiently exposed and imperfectly developed negative than anything else I can think of. He was as thin and pale as Mrs. Wilmington, but there was nothing hard or bony about him. He was soft as a shadow—his voice, his hand, his eyes.
‘And what are your names?’ he said, when he had shaken hands all round.
Caroline told him, and Charles added:
‘How funny of you not to know, uncle, when we’re all named after you!’