"Samuel, this is giving me great happiness," said Stephen, and held his brother's strong hand for a moment in both his weak ones. Then he looked at Sylvester, who was on his farther side. Samuel also looked at Sylvester. Sylvester looked back at Samuel. Blades of steel could not have crossed with a sharper clang.
"How are you, Sylvester?" inquired Samuel, and his glance dropped to Sylvester's chin as he said it. His hand remained in Stephen's, where it received a weak pressure, a quite involuntary one, born of anxiety.
"How are you, Samuel?" inquired Sylvester in return, and his glance lowered to the expensive scarfpin in Samuel's neckwear.
Jim Dent said "Good heavens!" somewhere inside of him, and the incident was closed by his uncle Sylvester's rising and walking away out of the room. The brothers had spoken—if this were speech. They had not shaken hands. An apprehending onlooker, betting on the probabilities, would have staked a considerable sum on the proposition that they would not shake hands within the next twenty-four hours—or twenty-four years.
"Well, well—here's Anne!" cried Jim Dent joyfully. He had been looking about him for first-aid to his uncle Stephen's wounded heart. Anne was no longer of the group of children who were accustomed to leap upon Cousin Jim and demand instant sport with him. Anne, being now eighteen, and lately returned from a two-years' absence at a boarding-school somewhere abroad, had allowed James Dent, Junior, to be in the house for a full half-hour before she emerged from some upstairs retreat and came to greet him. Being Mrs. Sam's eldest daughter she was naturally extraordinarily pretty, looking much as her mother had looked twenty years before. As Mrs. Sam was still a beauty, and as she was his favourite aunt—by marriage—it will be easy to imagine that when her nephew James had greeted her he had not failed to inquire for Anne. Still, he had had no possible idea that the change in Anne was going to be so great.
Anne held out her hand with a delightful smile. But Jim Dent would have none of such a sudden accession of reserve, and promptly kissed her, as of old. Whereupon her colour, always interesting to observe, became even more attractive, though she only said, reproachfully:
"Don't you see I'm grown up, Cousin Jim?"
Cousin Jim looked her over, from the crown of her charming dark head to the tips of her modishly shod little feet. "Bless your heart, so you are!" he exclaimed. "But will you tell me what that has to do with it?"
"Everything. I no longer can be kissed as a matter-of-course," declared Miss Anne Kingsley. "Only by special dispensation."
"Well, what do I think of that?" he demanded. "Sure, an' I don't know what I think! Still, as I see plenty of mistletoe about"—he had only to reach up a sinewy arm to secure a piece—"I can easily obtain that special dispensation."