“Now mind, dear,” she answered in her kindly, groping voice. “You'll be falling on to the rail if you aren't careful.” It strangely annoyed him that his father should greet Jim just as though he were some quite ordinary man in Polchester. He himself waited in a strange agitation until Jim should notice him. The man turned at last, bending down to pick up a box, saw him, touched his cap, smiling a long, crooked smile, and Jeremy blushed with happiness. It was the first recognition that he had had from the farm, and it pleased him. They all moved up to the higher road. Uncle Samuel, coming on at the last, in a dreamy, moody way, stopping on the bridge to look down at the railway-line, and then suddenly saying aloud: “Their minds are full of the number of boxes, and whether they'll get tea, and who's to pay what, and 'How badly I want a wash!' and already to-morrow they'll be wondering whether they oughn't to be getting home to Polchester. All sham! All sham!” He wasn't speaking to Jeremy, but to himself. However, Jeremy said: “Did you see Jim, Uncle?” “No, I did not.” “He's fatter and redder than last year.” “I shouldn't wonder.” “Are you going to paint, Uncle?” “I am.” “What?” “Oh, just lines and circles.” Jeremy paused, standing for a moment, and looked puzzled. Then he said: “Do you like babies, Uncle Samuel?” “No, I do not.” “Not even Barbara?” “No--certainly not.” “I don't, too... Why don't you paint cows and houses like other people, Uncle Samuel? I heard Father say once that he never knew what your pictures meant.” “That's why I paint them.” “Why?” “So that your father shan't know what they mean.” Although he did not understand this any more than he understood his uncle, Jeremy was pleased with this conversation. It had been, somehow, in tone with the place and the hour; it had conveyed to him in some strange fashion that his uncle cared for all of this rather as he himself cared. Oh! he liked Uncle Samuel! He had hoped that he might have sat on the box next to Jim, but that place was now piled up with luggage, so he was squeezed in between his mother and Mrs. Patcham, with Hamlet, very uncomfortable, between his knees. They drove off down the high road, the hot smell of the grass came to his nostrils, the sun blazed down upon them, turning the path before them into gleaming steel, and the high Glebeshire hedges, covered with thin powder, rose on both sides above them, breaking once and again to show the folding valleys, and the faint blue hills, and the heavy, dark trees with their thick, black shadows staining the grass.