“I shall see him better if I study him from a distance,” said Uncle Samuel. “He’s too large to see properly close to,” and he went—voted selfish by all because he would not help in the entertaining. “Of course I’m selfish,” said Uncle Samuel. “No one else cares tuppence about me, so where should I be if I didn’t look after myself?”
In any case their Uncle Percy actually was shut into the drawing-room, and five minutes later the children were sent for.
It had not been intended that Hamlet should enter with them, but he had a way of suddenly appearing from nowhere and joining, unobtrusively, any company that he thought pleasant and amusing. To-day, however, he was anything but unobtrusive; at the sudden shock of that red flaming figure with legs spread wide across the centre of the carpet he drew himself together and barked like a mad thing. Nothing would quiet him, and when Jeremy dragged him into the passage and left him there he still barked and barked and barked, quivering all over, in a perfect frenzy of indignation and horror. He had then to be taken to Jeremy’s bedroom on the top floor and shut in, and there, too, he barked, stopping only once and again for a howl. All this disturbed Uncle Percy’s greeting of the children, but he did not seem to mind. It was obvious at once that nothing could upset him. Jeremy simply could not take his eyes off him, off his brown, almost carroty, hair that stood on end almost like an aureole, off his purple cheeks and flat red nose and thick red neck, off his flaming purple tie, his waistcoat of red and brown squares, his bulging thighs, his tartan socks. This his father’s brother, the brother of his father who sat now, the dim shadow of a shade, pale and apprehensive upon the sofa. The brother of his father! Impossible! How could it be possible?
“Well, kid, what are you staring at?” came suddenly to him. “Know your old uncle again, hey? Think you’ll recognize him if you meet him in the Strand, ho? Know him anywhere, won’t you, ha? A likely kid that of yours, Herbert. Come and talk to your uncle, boy—come and talk to your uncle.”
Jeremy moved across the carpet slowly; he was deeply embarrassed, conscious of the solemn gaze of Aunt Amy, of Helen and Mary. A great red hand fell upon his shoulder. He felt himself suddenly caught up by the slack of his pants, held in mid-air, then dropped, cascades of laughter billowing meanwhile around him.
“That’s a fine boy, hey? That’s what we do to boys in New Zealand to make ’em grow. Want to grow, hey? Be a bigger man than your father, ho? Well, that won’t be difficult, anyway. Never were much of a size, were you, Herbert? Well, boy, go to school?”
“Yes,” said Jeremy.
“Like it?”
“Yes,” said Jeremy.
“Bully the boys smaller than yourself?”