The other children watched him with eyes of wonder and desire. Even Aunt Amy was surprised. She said a little but sniffed a lot, and told her brother that he “would regret the day.” He laughed and told her that Jeremy was “the only artist among the lot of them,” at which Aunt Amy went to Jeremy’s father and told him to be careful because her brother “was filling the child’s head with all sorts of notions that could do him no possible good.” Jeremy behaved like a saint in his uncle’s studio. He had his own corner of the shabby sofa where he would sit curled up like a dog. He chattered on and on, pouring out the whole of his mind, heart and soul, keeping nothing back, because his uncle seemed to understand everything and never made you feel a fool. He attacked him at once about Saladin and would not let him alone. In vain Uncle Samuel protested that he knew no history and that Saladin was a coloured devil as wicked as sin—Jeremy stuck fast to his ideal—so that at length Uncle Samuel in sheer self-defence was compelled to turn to a subject about which he did know something, namely the history of the town Polchester in which they were living. Never to any living soul had Uncle Samuel confided that he cared in the least about the old town; in his heart, nevertheless, he adored it, and for years had he been studying its life and manners. To his grave his knowledge would have gone with him had not Jeremy, in the secrecy of the studio, lured him on. Then, as though they were dram-drinking together, did the two sit close and talk about the town, and under the boy’s eyes the streets blossomed like the rose, the fountains played, the walls echoed to the cries and shouts of armoured men, and the cathedral towers rose ever higher and higher, gigantic, majestic, wonderful, piercing the eternal sky. Best of all he liked to hear about the Black Bishop, that proud priest who had believed himself greater than the High God, had defeated all his enemies, lived in the castle on the hill above the town like a king, and was at last encircled by a ring of foes, caught in the Cathedral Square, and died there fighting to the end. Jeremy would never forget one afternoon when he sat on the floor, his head against the shabby sofa, and Uncle Samuel, who was doing something to his paint-box, became carried away with the picture of his story. He drew for Jeremy the old town with the gabled roofs and the balconies and the cobbled roads, and the cathedral so marvellously alive above it all. As he talked the winter sun poured into the room in a golden stream, making the whitewashed walls swan-colour, turning some old stuffs that he had hanging over the door and near the window into wine-red shadow and purple light; and the trees beyond the high windows were stained copper against the dusky sky.