“Oh! In the parlour; in honour of this young man; a special occasion, a special occasion!” He repeated his pleasantry, chuckling softly and rubbing his hands, while it was all I could do to keep from returning his friendly and unconscious wink. “I’d rather stay here than run up and down stairs every time the bell rings,” Miss Izzy continued, the invitation to tea evidently rankling in her mind. From behind his father’s back George blew a kiss to her. Aunt Margaret welcomed me without effusion. She was an enormous woman, dark, middle-aged, and with a peculiar smile that always made me feel uneasy. Her lips parted and her teeth became visible, but otherwise her face underwent no change, the expression in her hard, shining, black eyes did not alter. It was, somehow, not a smile at all, but a grimace, and disappeared with a startling suddenness, leaving no trace behind it. When her face was at rest, her lips drew in, as if by some mysterious suction. She wore a wig, and it was this I think that helped to make her look peculiar, and even slightly uncanny. I had been told that she suffered from some obscure, internal disease, which at times caused her great pain, but though she was white and fat and puffy, she presented no appearance of being an invalid. As she kissed me, a ceremony I would gladly have dispensed with, I became conscious of a vague, sickly odour, reminding me of the smell of a chemist’s shop. Uncle George asked her if tea would soon be ready, but she gave him no answer; she only smiled in her strange fashion, and began to question me about my father and my journey――one would have thought I had been travelling all day. Two small boys held her by her voluminous skirts, my cousins, Gordon and Thomas. They were about six or seven, I suppose, and singularly unattractive, the kind of children who have perpetual colds and are never provided with an adequate supply of pocket-handkerchiefs. I shook hands with Gordon and Thomas; I really couldn’t do anything more; but their mother noticed my omission, for they had raised damp, red-nosed, little faces to be kissed, and though she only smiled again, I was convinced that already she had taken a dislike to me. Possibly her dislike dated back to an earlier period than our present meeting, but, with a boy’s subtle instinct, I was certain of its existence. Just then the door opened and another child entered the room. This was Alice, a little girl of ten. She completed the family, though there had been several others, who had died in infancy. Alice I did not kiss either. Looking up, I saw my aunt’s hard black eyes fixed upon me. I gave her back stare for stare, without flinching, and she turned away, with that curious, grimacing smile I now hated.