Next morning I had the pleasure of telling Mr. Spratling what I had done for him; and the way in which he slipped off his stool and pressed my hand, looking wistfully into my face, as if he were made sad by the want of language to express his feelings, quite affected me. Mr. Curling was immensely polite and officiously instructive. “You have made two worthy people very happy to-day,” he whispered. I smiled rather coldly, for my unaccountable prejudice against this gentleman was daily increasing, and I wanted nothing from him but the bare instruction he was capable of giving me. I was leaning with my hands behind me against the empty fireplace in the bank, thinking, I daresay, of Conny, when the swinging doors were pushed rather violently open, and a tall, stout man, dressed in a frock-coat and a broad-brimmed hat, the felt of which appeared to be brushed the wrong way, came in. “Is Mr. Hargrave within?” he inquired in a loud voice, pulling off his hat, and wiping his forehead with a huge pocket-handkerchief, at the same time staring at me in a manner, I thought, uncommonly rude. I returned his stare with a great deal of assurance, not even changing my posture, having no doubt that he was some old farmer who wanted to open an account at the bank. Mr. Spratling went to tell my uncle he was wanted. Meanwhile, my tall, stout friend, never removed his eyes from my face. Presently my uncle came out of his little back office, and had no sooner caught sight of the individual who wanted him, than he shouted out, “What! Dick! why, my dear boy, who on earth would have expected to see you!” “How are you? how are you, Tom?” replied the other, looking at my uncle for a moment, and immediately reverting to me. Then, throwing his handkerchief violently into his hat, which he had placed on the counter, he called out, pointing to me, “Tom, if that isn’t Charlie’s son, hang, draw, and quarter me!” “Why, of course it is,” replied my uncle. “Here, Charlie, let me introduce you to your uncle Richard.” I went up to the counter, and my uncle Richard gripped my hand with a squeeze, that left my fingers bloodless. “It is Charlie as he was at five-and-twenty--but better-looking!” he roared, pulling me hard against the counter, and examining my face with a broad grin on his own. “Come in, come in, this way, both of you!” called out my uncle Tom; and then shutting the door, he made us sit down. I looked at this fresh uncle of mine with unmixed curiosity. He was as unlike Tom as Tom was unlike my father. He had a fat, broad, English face, with immense double-chins, little strips of whiskers, sharp black eyes, and a head very nearly bald. He was as tall as my father, and about three times as big. Indeed, he only wanted a pair of top-boots, and a bottle-coloured cut-away coat, to have figured as a living reproduction of the picture of the traditional Mr. John Bull.