But now, as I stood watching him, he was becoming quite a hero in my eyes, for not only had he been abroad seeing the wonders of the world, but he had suddenly shown a liking for me, and his whole manner was changed.
When he had spoken to me in the house it had been in a pooh-poohing sort of fashion, as if I were a stupid troublesome boy, very much in the way, and as if he wondered at his sister and brother-in-law’s keeping me upon the premises; but now the change was wonderful. The cold distant manner had gone, and he began to talk to me as if he had known me all my life.
“Shall we go round the garden again, Dick?” said my uncle, after standing there nodding and smiling at me, evidently feeling very proud that his brother-in-law should take so much notice of the collection.
“No,” said our visitor sharply. “There, get your pipe, Joe, and you can sit down and look on while I go over Nat’s collection. We naturalists always compare notes—eh, Nat?”
I turned scarlet with excitement and pleasure, while Uncle Joseph rubbed his hands, beaming with satisfaction, and proceeded to take down his long clay pipe from where it hung upon two nails in the wall, and his little tobacco jar from a niche below the rafters.
“That’s what I often do here, Dick,” he said; “I sit and smoke and give advice—when it is asked, and Nat goes on with his stuffing and preserving.”
“Then now, you may sit down and give advice—when it is asked,” said our visitor smiling, “while Nat and I compare notes. Who taught you how to stuff birds, Nat?”
“I—I taught myself, sir,” I replied.
“Taught yourself?” he said, pinching one of my birds—a starling that I had bought for a penny of a man with a gun.
“Yes, sir; I pulled Polly to pieces.”