During the time my uncle was engaged in London, George, good man, remained at Ipswich to look after me, though we were forced reluctantly to dismiss him as soon as things were settled. It was impossible, however, on a hundred and fifty pounds a year to keep a man-servant; and so presently he went, and with him my last connection with the old life. Not more of the past than the clothes I stood in now remained to me. It was as if I had been shipwrecked and adopted by a stranger. But the final severance seemed a relief to Uncle Jenico, who, when it was accomplished, drew a long breath, and adjusted his glasses and looked at me rosily. “Now, Richard,” he said, “with nobody any longer to admonish us, comes the question of our home, and where to make it. Have you any choice?” Dear me; what did I know of the world’s dwelling-places? I answered that I left it all to him. “Very well,” he said, with a happy sigh; “then I have an original plan. Suppose we make it nowhere?” He paused to note how the surprise struck home. “You mean----” I began, hesitating. “I mean,” said he, “supposing we have no fixed abode, but go from place to place as it suits us?” What boy would not have jumped at the suggestion? I was in ecstasies. “You see,” said Uncle Jenico, “moving about, I get ideas; and in ideas lies our future prosperity. Let’s look at the map.” It was a lovely proposal. To enter, in actual being, the mysterious regions of pictures-on-the-wall; to breathe the real atmosphere, so long felt in romance, of tinted lithographs and coloured prints; to find roads and commons and phantom distances, wistful, unattainable dreams hitherto, made suddenly accessible to me--it was thrilling, it was rapturous. My uncle humoured the thought so completely as to leave to me the fanciful choice of our first resting-place. “Only don’t let it be too far,” he said. “Just at present we must go moderate, and until I can realise on the sale of a little patent, which I am on the point of parting with for an inadequate though considerable sum.”