“Hallo!” said I, seeing the room empty, though the lamps were lighted, “where’s my uncle?”
In truth, I had forgotten, in my nervousness, to inquire whether he had returned from London.
“I’ll go and see, sir.”
“Then he has come back?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Alone?”
“No; Mr. and Mrs. Curling have come with him.”
What adaptive aptitude servants have! How long would it take me to talk of “Mr. and Mrs. Curling” as glibly as if they had been man and wife ten years?
I sat down and pretended to feel at my ease, meanwhile watching the door anxiously. In about three minutes’ time it opened, and in came—everybody! Yes, I protest all my relations swarmed in at once. First came my uncle, with his shirt collars well up above his ears; then came my aunt with red eyes; then came Conny looking white as a sheet: and then came Curling—already a bruised and broken son-in-law, glancing with scared eyes about him, and stepping forward with the nervous, dubious air you may have observed in a decayed tradesman, who, having called four times with a subscription paper, is mistaken by your servant, and asked to “walk in.”
I stood up, not knowing whom to shake hands with first.