My aunt Susan took up the parable with an affectionate glance at her husband. “He’s always trying to make his old business jump,” she said. “Always putting fresh cards in the window, or getting up to something. You’d hardly believe. It makes ME jump sometimes.” “But it does no good,” said my uncle. “It does no good,” said his wife. “It’s not his miloo...” Presently they came upon a wide pause. From the beginning of their conversation there had been the promise of this pause, and I pricked my ears. I knew perfectly what was bound to come; they were going to talk of my father. I was enormously strengthened in my persuasion when I found my mother’s eyes resting thoughtfully upon me in the silence, and than my uncle looked at me and then my aunt. I struggled unavailingly to produce an expression of meek stupidity. “I think,” said my uncle, “that George will find it more amusing to have a turn in the market-place than to sit here talking with us. There’s a pair of stocks there, George—very interesting. Old-fashioned stocks.” “I don’t mind sitting here,” I said. My uncle rose and in the most friendly way led me through the shop. He stood on his doorstep and jerked amiable directions to me. “Ain’t it sleepy, George, eh? There’s the butcher’s dog over there, asleep in the road-half an hour from midday! If the last Trump sounded I don’t believe it would wake. Nobody would wake! The chaps up there in the churchyard—they’d just turn over and say: ‘Naar—you don’t catch us, you don’t! See?’.... Well, you’ll find the stocks just round that corner.” He watched me out of sight. So I never heard what they said about my father after all. VI When I returned, my uncle had in some remarkable way become larger and central. “Tha’chu, George?” he cried, when the shop-door bell sounded. “Come right through”; and I found him, as it were, in the chairman’s place before the draped grate. The three of them regarded me. “We have been talking of making you a chemist, George,” said my uncle. My mother looked at me. “I had hoped,” she said, “that Lady Drew would have done something for him—” She stopped. “In what way?” said my uncle. “She might have spoken to some one, got him into something perhaps....” She had the servant’s invincible persuasion that all good things are done by patronage. “He is not the sort of boy for whom things are done,” she added, dismissing these dreams. “He doesn’t accommodate himself. When he thinks Lady Drew wishes a thing, he seems not to wish it. Towards Mr. Redgrave, too, he has been—disrespectful—he is like his father.” “Who’s Mr. Redgrave?” “The Vicar.” “A bit independent?” said my uncle, briskly. “Disobedient,” said my mother. “He has no idea of his place. He seems to think he can get on by slighting people and flouting them. He’ll learn perhaps before it is too late.” My uncle stroked his cut chin and me. “Have you learnt any Latin?” he asked abruptly. I said I had not.