I was busy, while my father spoke, in making some pendent shelves for these "spirits elect;" for my mother, always provident where my father's comforts were concerned, had foreseen the necessity of some such accommodation in a hired lodging-house, and had not only carefully brought up to town my little box of tools, but gone out herself that morning to buy the raw materials. Checking the plane in its progress over the smooth deal, "My dear father," said I, "if at the Philhellenic Institute I had looked with as much awe as you do on the big fellows that had gone before me, I should have stayed, to all eternity, the lag of the Infant Division--" "Pisistratus, you are as great an agitator as your namesake," cried my father, smiling. "And so, a fig for the big fellows!" And now my mother entered in her pretty evening cap, all smiles and good humour, having just arranged a room for Uncle Roland, concluded advantageous negotiations with the laundress, held high council with Mrs Primmins on the best mode of defeating the extortions of London tradesmen; and, pleased with herself and all the world, she kissed my father's forehead as it bent over his notes; and came to the tea-table, which only waited its presiding deity. My Uncle Roland, with his usual gallantry, started up, kettle in hand, (our own urn, for we had one, not being yet unpacked;) and having performed, with soldier-like method, the chivalrous office thus volunteered, he joined me at my employment, and said-- "There is a better steel for the hands of a well-born lad than a carpenter's plane--" "Aha! uncle--that depends--" "Depends! what on?" "On the use one makes of it.--Peter the Great was better employed in making ships than Charles XII. in cutting throats." "Poor Charles XII.!" said my uncle sighing pathetically--"a very brave fellow!" "Pity he did not like the ladies a little better!" "No man is perfect!" said my uncle sententiously. "But seriously, you are _now_ the male hope of the family--you are now--" my uncle stopped, and his face darkened. I saw that he thought of his son, that mysterious son! And looking at him tenderly, I observed that his deep lines had grown deeper, his iron-gray hair more gray. There was the trace of recent suffering on his face; and though he had not spoken to us a word of the business on which he had left us, it required no penetration to perceive that it had come to no successful issue. My uncle resumed--"Time out of mind, every generation of our house has given one soldier to his country. I look round now: only one branch is budding yet on the old tree; and--" "Ah! uncle. But what would _they_ say? Do you think I should not like to be a soldier? Don't tempt me!"