Peter couldn't help smiling as he climbed the stairs, and yet it was a tender sort of smiling. Didn't these innocent ladies know that too much whisky invariably left a bad head? Or, with their divine faculty for forgetting, were they willing to forget the whisky and only to remember to cure the bad head? It was a white room--a woman's room most emphatically. The pictures on the walls were triumphs of sentimentality. Gallants were kissing their ladies' hands and clutching them to their breasts in an agony of parting, or looking meltingly at a flower which they had left. The seats of the chairs wore linen covers to prevent their upholstery from getting shabby. The window was wide; on the sill crumbs had been scattered. Sparrows chattered and, grown bold from habit, flew in on to the carpet and preened their feathers. On the bed, the sheets drawn close up under his chin, lay Uncle Waffles. He had the look that invalids sometimes have, of being made to appear more ill by too much attention. He had not shaved--his cheeks were grizzled; that help to make him look worse. The atmosphere of a sickroom was completed by a table placed beside the counterpane, on which lay an open Bible and some freshly plucked wall-flowers. Peter had never seen his uncle in bed--for the moment he was embarrassed. He drew up a chair. “How are you? Getting rested?” Uncle Waffles hitched himself higher on the pillow, reached out and took Peter's hand. A glint of the old love of fun-making crept into his eyes. “I've not been treated like this since my mother--not since I was married. They're pretending I'm ill because they want to nurse me. Carried off my trousers, they did, to prevent me from getting dressed. What's the matter with them? Don't they know who I am?” “They know.” “Then why are they doing it?” “Because they've suffered themselves.” Ocky tightened his grip on Peter's hand. “One of them been to--to where I've been, you mean? Which one?” Peter shook his head. “They've all been to prison in a sense--not the kind you speak of. They had a big tragedy, when everything looked happy. Since then----. Well, since then people have pitied and cut them. They've been left. They're glad you've come, partly because life's been cruel to you, and partly----. Look here, I don't want you to laugh!--partly because you're a man.” Ocky pulled the late Mr. Jacobite's night-shirt tighter across his shoulders. It was much too large for him--as voluminous as a surplice. “Not much of a man,” he muttered; “not much of a man. Arrived here--you know how. Before that had been hanging about street corners, watched by the police and jostled into the gutter. My own wife won't look at me; and yet you tell me these strangers----.” His voice shook. “I don't understand--can't see why----.” Peter spoke after an interval. “You--you haven't often been surprised by too much kindness, have you? Comes almost like a blow at first?”