That same evening Uncle Jenico arrived. I was just put to bed at the time, but he came and stood by me a little before I went to sleep and dreamt of him. He was not the least grown from his place in my memory--only, to my wonder, a little more shabby-looking than I seemed to recollect. The round gold spectacles were there, and the big beaver hat, and the blue frock coat, and the nankeen trousers, and the limp--all but the first and last a trifle the worse for wear. His smile, however, was as cherubic, his despatch-box as glossy, his walking-stick as stout as ever; and he nodded at me like a benevolent Mandarin. “Only we two left, my boy,” he said. “Poor papa, dear papa! He’s learnt by now the secret of perpetual motion.” It was an odd introduction. I cried a little, and, moved by his kindness, clung to him. “There!” he said, soothing me. “That’s all right. We are going to be famous friends, _we_ are. _We’ll_ invent things; _we’ll_ set the Thames on fire, _we_ will.” Whether from exhaustion or from the dreamy contemplation of this amazing feat to be performed by us, I fell asleep in his arms, lulled for the first time out of my grief, and did not awake till bright morning. The fog was gone; the birds were singing to us to carry my father to his rest under the blue sky. By-and-by we set out, Uncle Jenico very grave, in black, with a long weeper round his hat. Mr. Quayle, and one or two more, who had lingered a day behind the Assizes to do honour to the dead, came with us; and others, including the judge, sent flowers. It was a simple, pathetic service, in a green corner of the churchyard. I felt more than understood its beauty, and when once I caught a glimpse of Uncle Jenico busily and stealthily writing something with a pencil on the inside lining of his hat, I accepted the fact naturally as a detail of the ceremony. But it was on the way home in the carriage that he disillusioned me by removing his hat, and showing me a little drawing of a gravestone he had made therein. “Just an idea that occurred to me,” he said, “to perpetuate the memory of poor papa. We want to do something better than keep it _green_, you see. The weather and the lichen pay us all _that_ compliment. So I suggest having the inscription very small, on a stone something the shape of a dining-room clock, and over it a magnifying glass boss, like one of those paperweights, you know, that have a little view at the back. The tooth of Time could never touch that. What do you think now?” I thought it a very pleasant and kind idea, and told him so, at which he was obviously pleased. But it was never carried out, no more than many another he developed; and in the end--but that was long afterwards--a simple headstone, of my own design, commemorated my beloved father’s virtues.