"Oh! ask him to come up, Peters, at once. Bring tea here. Lord Massiter will have his downstairs, I expect."
Had her grandmother told Uncle John anything? Was his visit in connection with anything that he had heard? Of all the changes that her marriage had brought her, that she should have slipped away from Uncle John was one of the saddest. She loved him as dearly as ever, but restraint had been there between them, struggle against it though they might. He was, like Roddy, so ineloquent that anything like a situation was real agony to him; he could never explain his feelings about anything and he would eagerly agree with you that it was a great pity that he had any. What had made this trouble between them? Rachel only knew that now there were so many things in her life which Uncle John could not understand. At her heart her love for him was as clear and simple as it had ever been.
But oh! Uncle John was glad to see her! His picture of her, as she sat there, her cheeks flushed, in a rose-coloured dress, with the room as soft and delicate as a shell around her, filled him with delight: changes had come to him even since their last meeting. The lines in his forehead seemed to her a little deeper, his eyes were anxious and his smile less sure and genial. He wore a beautiful white waistcoat and sat there, with his chest out, his white hair rising into a crest, looking exactly like a pouter pigeon.
"Dear Uncle John! I'm so glad!"
"Well, my dear, I was just passing. Been to some woman who's got a party in Harley House. War party, of course, there were characters of the names of different generals and if you won you paid a guinea to the War Fund—quite a reversal of the ordinary proceedings. I'm sure, my dear, I don't know why I went. Well, it was so close that I felt I couldn't walk back, even to 104, without a cup of tea from you. How's Roddy?"
"All right. Lord Massiter's been down there chatting to him ever since three o'clock. Would you like us to go down and have our tea with them, or shall we stay cosily up here by ourselves?"
"Why, stay up here of course! You're not looking very well, my dear. You've not been the thing lately, have you? This business with Roddy?..." (he took her hand and held it)—"Don't you think it would be a good thing if you went away for a week or two and had a change?"
"No, Uncle John dear, thank you. I am tired and I will go away later on, but just now it would only make me anxious and I should worry about Roddy."
Tea was brought. She looked at Uncle John and thought that he had heard nothing. His guileless eyes smiled back at her; all that she could discern in him was apprehension lest he should say something to displease her, to make her angry. Bless his heart, he need not be afraid of that now!
As she gave him his sugar she felt that some of the old intimate relationship between them was creeping back.