"I gathered that you'd been very friendly," Joe Kenyon replied, his attention returning to the sunset. "Not that you can be of any help in his case."
"I don't know, I might," Arthur blurted out on the impulse of the moment. "Look here, I've got a couple of hundred pounds he's welcome to, if he'd care to have it. He said something about trying his luck in Canada if he could raise the money."
His uncle made no answer for a few seconds, then he definitely resigned himself to the loss of the sunset, drew his nephew's arm through his own, and began to walk slowly up and down the length of the broad gravel walk upon which they had been standing.
"Good of you, Arthur, very good and generous of you," he said; "but it's no use. Hubert's in love and he's a bit above himself, but he'd never do anything in Canada. He's too soft and ignorant. We only guess what the world's like outside this place, but the things we do guess don't tempt us to explore it." He paused a moment before he continued: "We don't talk about ourselves, of course, but you must know the truth pretty well by this time—besides, you're practically one of us now."
Arthur was keenly interested. "I'm not sure that I do know the truth, Uncle Joe," he said. "Except—well, Hubert told me this afternoon that your father—er—keeps you pretty short of cash and so on; makes it jolly difficult for you to sort of—well—break away."
Joe Kenyon smiled grimly. "Difficult!" he repeated, and then, "I suppose you haven't got a cigar on you? All right, never mind. I smoke too much: that's another compensation."
"Couldn't you tell me how things are, a bit more?" Arthur ventured. "You know I might be able to help."
"It isn't easy to tell you, you see," Joe Kenyon said, after a short pause. "Let's sit down. But ..." he hesitated, grunting and sighing, before he blurted out, "But you might just run up to the house and get me a couple of cigars, there's a good fellow. Then, I'll—I'll tell you a story. Only you needn't, that is, I shouldn't say anything to the others about our being down here."
While his uncle had been talking, Arthur's heart had warmed to him, but in the ten minutes that now intervened while he went to the house for the cigars, he had a brief reaction. As he entered the house, the habit of mind that had been growing upon him for the past five weeks strangely reasserted itself. He was aware again of the futility and weakness of the Kenyons, their laziness, their self-indulgence, and what he could only regard as the meanness of their attitude towards the expected inheritance.
And his uncle seemed to be the very type of all these aspects of the family—a man so idle and weak that he could not exist without his cigar for half an hour. He might have endless excuses, but there must be a horribly lax strain in him somewhere. He was afraid even of his own sisters and his brother-in-law. He had not wanted them to know where he was and what he was saying.