The accommodating Mr. Lunn suggested that this interval should be bridged by a personally conducted expedition to his rooms downstairs, where he would have great pleasure in exhibiting to the company a "rather decent" collection of door-knockers and bell-handles, the acquisition of which articles of _vertu_ (he being a youth of strong wrist and fleet foot) was a special hobby of his. Hughie was left alone with his uncle--the only relation he possessed in the world, and the man who had been to him both father and mother for nearly eighteen years. Hughie had been born in India. His recollections of his parents were vague in the extreme, but if he shut both eyes and pressed hard upon them with his hands he could summon up various pictures of a beautiful lady, whose arms were decked with glittering playthings that jingled musically when she carved the chicken for Hughie's nursery dinner. He particularly remembered these arms, for their owner had a pleasant habit of coming up to kiss him good-night after his ayah had put him to bed. On these occasions they were always bare; and Hughie remembered quite distinctly how much more comfortable they were then than next morning at tiffin, when they were enclosed in sleeves which sometimes scratched. Of his father he remembered less, except that he was a very large person who wore gorgeous raiment of scarlet. Also things on his heels which clicked. He had a big voice, too, this man, and he used to amuse himself by training Hughie to stand stiffly erect whenever he cried, "'Shun!" Hughie also remembered a voyage on a big ship, where the passengers made much of him, and a fascinating person in a blue jersey (which unfortunately scratched) presented him with numerous string balls, which smelt most gloriously of tar but always fell into the Indian Ocean or some other inaccessible place. Then he remembered arriving with his parents at a big bungalow in a compound full of grassplots and flower-beds, where a person whom he afterwards learned to call Uncle Jimmy greeted him gravely and asked him to accept his hospitality for a time. After that--quite soon--he remembered saying good-bye to his parents, or rather, his parents saying good-bye to him. The big man shook him long and solemnly by the hand, which hurt a good deal but impressed Hughie deeply, and the beautiful lady's arms--with thick sleeves on, too!--clung round Hughie's neck till he thought he would choke. But he stood stiffly at "'shun" all the time, because his parents seemed thoroughly unhappy about something, and he desired to please them. He had never had a woman's arms round his neck since.