A few weeks ago the master had returned from a protracted visit to London, bringing with him two children. He had announced that the pair were henceforth to be regarded as permanent inmates of the establishment. Beyond the fact that one brat was fair and a boy and the other darkish and a girl, and that Mrs. Capper had given warning on sight, Hughie could elicit nothing, and waited composedly for his uncle to come home from shooting.
Jimmy Marrable, when he arrived, was not communicative. He merely stated that the little devils were the children of an old friend of his, called Gaymer, who had died suddenly and left them to be brought up by him as guardian.
"And Hughie, my son," he concluded, "if you don't want your head bitten off you will refrain in this case from indulging in your propensity for asking why and getting to the bottom of things. I'm not best pleased at finding them on my hands, but here they are and there's an end of it. The girl is five—ten years younger than you—and the boy's eight. She is called Joan, and his idiotic name is Lancelot Wellesley. I wonder they didn't christen him Galahad Napoleon! Come upstairs and see them."
All this had occurred seven years ago. During that time Lancelot Wellesley Gaymer had grown up sufficiently to go to a public school, and consequently Miss Joan Gaymer had been left very much in the company of the curious old gentleman whom she had soon learned to call Unker Zimmy. Of their relations it will be sufficient at present to mention that a more curiously assorted and more thoroughly devoted couple it would be difficult to find.
Jimmy Marrable reclined on the window seat and smoked his cigar. His nephew, enviously eyeing the blue smoke, sprawled in an arm-chair.
"Hughie," said the elder man suddenly, "how old are you? Twenty-one, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"And are you going down for good next week?"
"Yes." Hughie sighed.
"Got a degree?"