"Being my nephew, he is a young gentleman, of course!"
"Ha!" quoth my uncle George.
"Hum!" sighed my uncle Jervas. "A gentleman is usually a better man for having been a lad! As to our nephew—"
"Pray, Jervas," said aunt Julia, lifting white imperious hand, "suffer me one word, at least; in justice to myself I can sit mute no longer—"
"Mute?" exclaimed uncle George, grasping whisker again. "Mute, were you, Julia; oh, begad, why then—"
"George—silence—I plead!" said my aunt, and folding her white hands demurely on her knee gazed down at them wistfully beneath drooping lashes.
"Proceed, Julia," quoth my uncle Jervas, "your voice is music to my soul—"
"Mine too!" added uncle George, "mine too, dooce take me if 't isn't!"
MY AUNT (her voice soft and plaintively sad). For nineteen happy years I have devoted myself to caring for my nephew Peregrine, body and mind. My every thought has been of him or for him, my love has been his shield against discomforts, bodily ailments and ills of the mind—
MY UNCLE JERVAS. And precisely there, Julia, lies his happy misfortune. You have thought for him so effectively he has had small scope to think for himself; cared for him so sedulously that he shall hardly know how to take care of himself; sheltered him so rigorously that, once removed from the sphere of your strong personality, he would be pitifully lost and helpless. In short, he is suffering of a surfeit of love, determined tenderness and pertinacious care—in a word, Julia, he is over-Juliaized!