I returned to my uncle and the ladies in the drawing room. By this time I felt quite at home, a feeling to which the improvement effected by the hair-brush and towel in the _coup-d’œil_ of my personal appearance did not a little contribute; and I could stop to admire. Addressing myself to my aunt, I complimented her upon the beauty of the grounds, a glimpse of which I could catch through the windows, and entered easily into a conversation, in which my uncle and Conny joined with great readiness. My uncle gained upon me. Yellow, and spare, and shrewd as his face was, a great deal of heart and amiability were mixed up in it. He was five years younger than my father, but was one of those men who look fifty when they are thirty, and forty when they are sixty. He had lank black hair, and a long nose, and a spasmodic way of speaking, as if, after delivering himself of a few sentences, he found difficulty in breathing. I asked him what time the bank closed. “At four,” he answered. “The clerks generally get away by half-past.” “Do you like the idea of being a banker’s clerk?” inquired Conny, with a gleam of mischief in her blue unfathomable eyes. “I haven’t the least notion,” I replied. “All that I know about banks is that they are places where you offer cheques and receive money for them.” “True,” said my uncle, with a laugh; “but people must work very hard in order to induce the banks to change those cheques into money.” “I wonder your papa didn’t put you into the army,” said Conny. “Would not you have liked to be a soldier?” “It is immaterial to me what I am, provided I am easy in my mind, and have time now and then to smoke a cigar,” answered I, with the lofty languor of an exquisite of the first water.