So I opened the nursery door and went in. An uncle has no honour in his own country, and my two small nieces assaulted me immediately. Phyllis dragged me to a chair, while Lillah shrieked unrelentingly in my ear that Daddy was a sergeant. "So the special constables have seen that your father is a born policeman?" I said as I sat down. "The _special_ ones," nodded Phyllis with profound pride. "Magnificent," I murmured. "He has at last justified his choice of the law as a profession." "Tell us," said Lillah, with the air with which one speaks of a self-made man who has just appeared in the Honours List--"tell us how Daddy started." "He went to the Bar," I said. "Bar?" echoed Lillah. "Why, yes," I said; "it's a place where people wait." "Like a station?" "Only the trains don't always come in. Anyway, on one side of the bar are a lot of young men waiting for something to turn up, and on the other a lot of old men writing autobiographies." "But aren't there any middling-olders?" This is Phyllistian for men of middle age. "Not allowed," I said. "At the Bar you are either a junior or a reminiscer." "What's that?" "It's an illness that attacks people who aren't really famous." Phyllis stared. "Like measles?" I nodded. "Oh," cried Lillah eagerly, "do the reminiscers go all pink?" "They ought to," said I. There was a silence. The round eyes of Phyllis were full of suspicion. "Daddy said," she remarked slowly, "that he did law." "So he does," I answered. "Well, what's that, then?" Small girls ask questions in two words which wise men must write books to answer. "The law," I answered warily, "gives reasons for things that are unreasonable." "Like what?" said Phyllis. I laughed a little uneasily. This was getting difficult. "Oh--er--things like getting married," I said, "and refraining from shooting little girls who ask questions." I admit that this sort of joke is the last infirmity of an uncle's otherwise noble mind. They regarded me sadly. Then Lillah turned to Phyllis with a detached air. "Uncle James is being grand," she said, "because he doesn't know what law is." "Don't you?" said Phyllis. "Perhaps not," I murmured feebly. The nursery makes very small beer of the cynic. There was a moment's silence. "You've told us wrong," said Phyllis sternly. "Daddy isn't ever wrong." "So he's risen from his bar to be a sergeant," added Lillah, with the air of one finishing a story with a moral. I'm afraid I chuckled. It was in very bad taste, of course, but I couldn't help it. I suppose George is one of the most egregious Micawbers of the English Bar, whereas I---- why, I remember noticing a brief on the mantelpiece in my chambers only last month. "Poor Uncle James," said Phyllis in her best drawing-room tones, "perhaps if you tried very hard----" They had mistaken my laughter for that bitter disappointed kind you get in the theatres. "I know," said Lillah; "we'll play Germans, and Uncle James can pretend he's a sergeant."