Still gray weather, I observed through the grimy panes: fog sweeping by with a northeast wind. For a moment I watched the dripping passengers on the opposite pavement.
“Well,” says the gray stranger, with a harsh little laugh, “God help Top when the tale is told!”
I should never, of course, treat my uncle with unkindness.
“My boy,” he most earnestly besought me, “will you not heed me?”
“I’ll hear you, sir,” I answered.
“Attend, then,” says he. “I have brought you here to warn you, and my warning is but half spoken. Frankly, in this I have no concern for your happiness, with which I have nothing to do: I have been moved to this ungrateful and most dangerous interview by a purely selfish regard for my own career. Do you know the word? A political career of some slight importance,” he added, with a toss of the head, “which is now menaced, at a most critical moment, by that merciless, wicked old pirate whom you have shamelessly been deceived into calling your uncle Nicholas. To be frank with you, you are, and have been for several years, an obstacle. My warning, however, as you will believe, is advanced upon grounds advantageous to yourself. Put the illusions of this designing old bay-noddie away from 239 you,” says he, now accentuating his earnestness with a lean, white forefinger. “Rid yourself of these rings and unsuitable garments: they disgrace you. When the means of their possession is disclosed to you––when the wretched crime of it is made known––you will suffer such humiliation as you did not dream a man could feel. Put ’em away. Put ’em out of sight and mind. Send that young man from London back to the business he came from. A tutor! Your tutor! Tom Callaway’s son with an English tutor! You are being made a ghastly fool of; and I warn you that you will pay for every moment of the illusion. Poor lad!” cries he, in genuine distress. “Poor lad!”
It might be: I had long thought so.
“And as for this grand tour abroad,” he began, with an insolently curling lip, “why, for God’s sake! don’t be a––”
“Sir!” I interrupted, in a rage.
There had been talk of a trip abroad: it seemed I was bound upon it, by advice of Sir Harry, to further my education and to cure my foot of its twist.