Very shortly after his parents" departure Hughie overheard a conversation between his uncle and Mrs. Capper, the lady who managed the household, which puzzled him a good deal.

"Understand, Capper, I won"t have it," said his uncle.

"Think what people will say, sir," urged Mrs. Capper respectfully but insistently.

"I don"t care a"--Capper coughed discreetly here--"what people say. The boy is not going to be decked out in c.r.a.pe and hea.r.s.e-plumes to please you or any other old woman."

"Hea.r.s.e-plumes would not be essential, sir," said the literal Capper.

"But I think the child should have a little black suit."

"The child will run about in his usual rags," replied Old Peppery, in a voice of thunder; "and if I catch you or any one else stuffing him up with yarns about canker-worms or h.e.l.l-fire, or any tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs of that description, I tell you straight that there will be the father and mother of a row."

"Yes, sir," said Capper meekly. "And I desire, sir," she added in the same even tone, "to give warning."

Thereupon Uncle Jimmy had stamped his way downstairs to the hall, and Hughie was left wondering what the warning could have been which Mrs.

Capper desired to utter. It must have been a weighty one, for she continued to deliver it at intervals during the next ten years, long indeed after Hughie"s growing intelligence had discovered its meaning.

But her utterances received about as much attention from her employer as Ca.s.sandra"s from hers.

However, the immediate result of the conversation recorded above was that Mrs. Capper made no attempt to deck Hughie in c.r.a.pe or hea.r.s.e-plumes; and later on, when he was old enough to understand the meaning of death, his uncle told him how his parents had gone to their G.o.d together--"the happiest fate, old man, that can fall on husband and wife"--one stormy night in the Bay of Biscay, in company with every other soul on board the troop-ship Helianthus, and that henceforth Hughie must be prepared to regard the broken-down old buffer before him as his father and mother.

Hughie had gravely accepted this arrangement, and for more than seventeen years he and his uncle had treated one another as father and son.

Jimmy Marrable was a little eccentric,--but so are most old bachelors,--and like a good many eccentric men he rather prided himself on his peculiarities. If anything, he rather cultivated them. One of his most startling characteristics was a habit of thinking aloud. He would emerge unexpectedly from a brown study, to comment to himself with stunning suddenness and absolute candour on the appearance and manners of those around him. It was credibly reported that he had once taken a rather intense and voluble lady in to dinner, and after regarding her for some time with a fixity of attention which had deluded the good soul into the belief that he was hanging on her lips, had remarked to himself, with appalling distinctness, during a lull in the conversation: "Guinea set--misfit at the top--gutta-percha fixings--wonder they don"t drop into her soup!" and continued his meal without any apparent consciousness of having said anything unusual.

He was eccentric, too, about other matters. Once Hughie, returning from school for his holidays, discovered that there had been an addition to the family in his absence.

Mrs. Capper"s very face in the hall told him that something was wrong.

Its owner informed Hughie that though one should be prepared to take life as one found it, and live and let live had been her motto from infancy, her equilibrium ever since the thing had happened had lain at the mercy of the first aggressively disposed feather that came along, and what people in the neighbourhood would say she dared not think.

She ran on. Hughie waited patiently, and presently unearthed the facts.

A few weeks ago the master had returned from a protracted visit to London, bringing with him two children. He had announced that the pair were henceforth to be regarded as permanent inmates of the establishment. Beyond the fact that one brat was fair and a boy and the other darkish and a girl, and that Mrs. Capper had given warning on sight, Hughie could elicit nothing, and waited composedly for his uncle to come home from shooting.

Jimmy Marrable, when he arrived, was not communicative. He merely stated that the little devils were the children of an old friend of his, called Gaymer, who had died suddenly and left them to be brought up by him as guardian.

"And Hughie, my son," he concluded, "if you don"t want your head bitten off you will refrain in this case from indulging in your propensity for asking why and getting to the bottom of things. I"m not best pleased at finding them on my hands, but here they are and there"s an end of it.

The girl is five--ten years younger than you--and the boy"s eight. She is called Joan, and his idiotic name is Lancelot Wellesley. I wonder they didn"t christen him Galahad Napoleon! Come upstairs and see them."

All this had occurred seven years ago. During that time Lancelot Wellesley Gaymer had grown up sufficiently to go to a public school, and consequently Miss Joan Gaymer had been left very much in the company of the curious old gentleman whom she had soon learned to call Unker Zimmy.

Of their relations it will be sufficient at present to mention that a more curiously a.s.sorted and more thoroughly devoted couple it would be difficult to find.

Jimmy Marrable reclined on the window seat and smoked his cigar. His nephew, enviously eyeing the blue smoke, sprawled in an arm-chair.

"Hughie," said the elder man suddenly, "how old are you? Twenty-one, isn"t it?"

"Yes."

"And are you going down for good next week?"

"Yes." Hughie sighed.

"Got a degree?"

"Tell you on Tuesday."

"Tell me now."

"Well--yes, I should think."

"What in?"

"Mechanical Stinks--Engineering. Second Cla.s.s, if I"m lucky."

"Um. Got any vices?"

"Not specially."

"Drink?"

"No."

"Not a teetotaller?" said Jimmy Marrable in some concern.

"No."

"That"s good. Ever been drunk?"

"Yes."

"Badly, I mean. I"m not talking about b.u.mp-supper exhilaration."

"Only once."

"When?"

"My first term."

"What for?"

"To see what it was like."

"Perfectly sound proceeding," commented Jimmy Marrable. "What were your impressions of the experiment?"

"I haven"t got any," said Hughie frankly. "I only woke up next morning in bed with my boots on."

"Who put you there?"

"Seven other devils."