"Is that London?" said Jeff with an air of deep disappointment. "Oh, how dirty it looks! it's nothing half as grand as Bombay."
A tall thin gentleman with whiskers beginning to turn gray had walked past Jeff twice, casting a scrutinizing glance towards him. The little boy had noticed the stranger because he was so oddly stiff and very stern looking. At this moment Maggie came up the companion steps and started towards this gentleman with a cry of recognition.
"Mr. Colquhoun, here we are, sir!"
The angular gentleman, who stepped so carefully over coils of rope and the obstacles of luggage, looked precisely as if he had come out of a bandbox. He was so very much starched, indeed, that Jeff could not help wondering if a summer in the plains would make him less stiff. As he came nearer and put out a hand to the little boy, who was his wife's nephew, it seemed like a piece of wood with mechanical joints.
"So this is Mary's son," he said in a formal way. "How do you do, little fellow. You're not much of a specimen to send home. I suppose they have spoilt you pretty well in India. What is your name? Ah, yes, Geoffry, to be sure; after your father's family, I suppose."
Jeff did not like the way in which Mr. Colquhoun spoke his father's name. He was quickly sensitive to a tone or look. In after days he wondered much why an attitude of hostility was always tacitly assumed towards his father.
"My father's people have always been brave soldiers. Two of his brothers were killed in the mutiny; they were heroes, I think. They were called Geoffry and Roger."
The little boy made up his mind that he should never like the new uncle. The disparaging accent on his father's name was an insult.
Mr. Colquhoun had married Jeff's aunt, his mother's eldest sister, and lived at Loch Lossie with grandmama, under whose roof Jeff was to be.
But Jeff did not know yet that grandmama was only the nominal ruler there.