During all the week following Christmas the Coles were a miserable family, and in the middle of them Jeremy moved, a figure of stone. They wished him to be an outcast; very well then, he would be an outcast. They thought him a criminal and not fit for their society; very well then, he would be apart and of himself. The presents were there, at the bottom of his play-box. His only definite punishment was that he should receive no pocket-money throughout the holidays—but he was a pariah—and a pariah he would be. Once his mother talked to him, drawing him to her, putting her arms around him. “Jeremy, dear, just go to father and say you’re sorry and then it will all be over.” “I’m not sorry.” “Well, if you’re not sorry about spending the money, because you didn’t know that you oughtn’t to, say you’re sorry because you kicked father.” “I’m not sorry I kicked father.” “But father loves you. He was only doing what he thought was right.” “Father doesn’t love me or he would have known I didn’t steal the money.” “But, Jeremy dear, father wants you to realize that you mustn’t spend other people’s money as though it were your own. You’re too young to understand now——” “I’m not too young to understand.” Mrs. Cole sighed. This Jeremy was utterly strange to her, so old, so oddly different from the boy of a year ago, so hard and so hostile. She was very unhappy. And Jeremy, too, was unhappy—desperately unhappy. It was no fun being a rebel. Sometimes he was on the very edge of surrender, longing to go and submit to his father, fling his arms round his mother, listen to Mary’s silly stories, play and shout and sing and laugh as he used to do. Something kept him back. It was as though he were in a nightmare, one of those nightmares when you can’t speak, a weight is on your chest, you move against your will. He was so unhappy that he told Hamlet that he was going to run away to sea. He had serious thoughts of this. Then suddenly Uncle Samuel returned from Paris. VI It was a wet, windy evening. The rain was blowing in streaky gusts up Orange Street, sending the lamps inebriated, and whipping at windows as though it would never find outlet sufficient for its ill temper. Out of the storm came Uncle Samuel in a black cape and a floppy black hat, straight from that mysterious, unseen, unfathomed country, Paris. As usual, he was casual and careless enough in his greetings, kissed his sister quickly, nodded to his brother-in-law, grinned at the children, and was in a moment transported to that strange region at the back of the house where was his studio, that magical place into which none of the children had even entered. He did not that evening apparently notice Jeremy’s desolate figure. On the following afternoon Jeremy, Hamlet at his heels, was hanging disconsolately about the passage when his uncle suddenly appeared. “Hallo!” he said. “Hallo!” said Jeremy.