A Man's Man

by Ian Hay

Hughie was left alone with his uncle—the only relation he possessed in the world, and the man who had been to him both father and mother for nearly eighteen years.

Hughie had been born in India. His recollections of his parents were vague in the extreme, but if he shut both eyes and pressed hard upon them with his hands he could summon up various pictures of a beautiful lady, whose arms were decked with glittering playthings that jingled musically when she carved the chicken for Hughie's nursery dinner. He particularly remembered these arms, for their owner had a pleasant habit of coming up to kiss him good-night after his ayah had put him to bed. On these occasions they were always bare; and Hughie remembered quite distinctly how much more comfortable they were then than next morning at tiffin, when they were enclosed in sleeves which sometimes scratched.

Of his father he remembered less, except that he was a very large person who wore gorgeous raiment of scarlet. Also things on his heels which clicked. He had a big voice, too, this man, and he used to amuse himself by training Hughie to stand stiffly erect whenever he cried, "'Shun!"

Hughie also remembered a voyage on a big ship, where the passengers made much of him, and a fascinating person in a blue jersey (which unfortunately scratched) presented him with numerous string balls, which smelt most gloriously of tar but always fell into the Indian Ocean or some other inaccessible place.

Then he remembered arriving with his parents at a big bungalow in a compound full of grassplots and flower-beds, where a person whom he afterwards learned to call Uncle Jimmy greeted him gravely and asked him to accept his hospitality for a time. After that—quite soon—he remembered saying good-bye to his parents, or rather, his parents saying good-bye to him. The big man shook him long and solemnly by the hand, which hurt a good deal but impressed Hughie deeply, and the beautiful lady's arms—with thick sleeves on, too!—clung round Hughie's neck till he thought he would choke. But he stood stiffly at "'shun" all the time, because his parents seemed thoroughly unhappy about something, and he desired to please them. He had never had a woman's arms round his neck since.

After his parents had gone, he settled down happily enough in the big compound, which he soon learned to call "the garding." The name of the bungalow he gathered from most of the people with whom he came in contact was "The 'All," though there were some who called it "Manors," and Uncle Jimmy, who, too, apparently possessed more than one name, was invariably referred to by Hughie's friends in the village as "Ole Peppery."

Very shortly after his parents' departure Hughie overheard a conversation between his uncle and Mrs. Capper, the lady who managed the household, which puzzled him a good deal.

"Understand, Capper, I won't have it," said his uncle.

"Think what people will say, sir," urged Mrs. Capper respectfully but insistently.

"I don't care a"—Capper coughed discreetly here—"what people say. The boy is not going to be decked out in crape and hearse-plumes to please you or any other old woman."