Uncle Percy himself had no conception that anything unusual had occurred. He had been shouting people down and bullying them for years. Something subconsciously told him that his brother was going to be easy game; perhaps deep down in that mighty chest of his something chuckled; and that was all. But for Jeremy that was not all. He went up to his room and considered the matter. Readers of this chronicle and the one that preceded it will be aware that his relations with his father had not been altogether happy ones. He had not quite understood his father, and his father had not quite understood him, but he had always felt awe of his father and had cherished the belief that he must be infinitely wise. Uncle Samuel was wise too, but in quite another way. Uncle Samuel was closer, far closer, and he could talk intimately to him about every sort of thing, but people laughed at Uncle Samuel quite openly and said he was no good, and Uncle Samuel himself confessed this. His father had been remote, august, Olympian. It was true that last Christmas he had hit his father and tried to bite him; but that had been in a fit of rage that was madness, neither more nor less. When you were mad you might do anything. His father had been august—but now? Jeremy dared not look back over the luncheon scene, dared not face once again the nervous flush, the silly laugh, the feeble retort. His father was a coward and the honour of the family was at stake. After that luncheon outburst, however, the situation moved so swiftly that it went far beyond poor Jeremy. I don’t suppose that Uncle Percy was aware of anything very much save his own happiness and comfort, but to any outsider it would have seemed that he now gave up the whole of his time and energy to baiting his brother. He was not a bad man nor deliberately unkind, but he loved to have someone to tease, as the few women for whom in his life he had cared had discovered in time to save themselves from marrying him. I say that he was unconscious of what he was doing; and so in a fashion was the Cole family unconscious. That is, Mrs. Cole and Aunt Amy and the children realized that Uncle Percy was being rude, but they did _not_ realize that the work of years was, in a few days, being completely undone. So used to custom and tradition are we that in our daily life we will accept almost any figure in the condition in which we receive it and then proceed to add our own little “story” to the structure already presented to us.