"Uncle Thomas!" Bill cried to Mr. Fright, "Uncle Thomas! Father's going to be took bad!"
Mr. Fright scowled at his nephew. Bill had taken of late to seeing ghosts, or shadows—something unwholesome, anyway. The less one noticed or encouraged him the sooner would he return to his natural ways, and leave the whimsies to his betters, which can afford the same.
Bill watched the Shadow stooping over father, nearer, nearer—Uncle Joey's ghost wrapping long arms round father—riding him, and then passing into him. There! The Shadow was gone in.
Bill cried aloud. "Oh, Uncle, can't you see? You—you are all blind? Look! Look!"
Just as though the spirit of Uncle Joey had captured father's body, so it seemed to be Joey who was waking up, yawning, stretching himself, and rapping knuckles truculent on the table, while in a hoarse whisper he ordered gin. Father's way would have been quite different—a blinking of the eyes, an apologetic grin, a cordial good morning to the gentlemen present, and a polite inquiry, "Did any one say gin?"
Surely, any one with eyes in his head could see that this was Uncle Joey taking a rousing pinch of snuff from the public mull on the table. Father never touched snuff, but always chewed twist tobacco.
Father would have been amiable, but Joey was fierce, with a sharp rasping voice demanding liquor even while he sneezed out the strong snuff.
Yet nobody seemed to see the change, the menace. Mr. Fright was expounding an argument to the bald customer, taking no notice whatever of the deep-throated growl of the drunkard in the window place, who now stood up shouting and threatening.
Bill turned to Mr. Fright. "Uncle Thomas!" he called. "Look out!—look out!"
"Vot's up?" asked Uncle Thomas, and went on counting on his fingers the heads of the argument. "And thirdly——"