thing had occurred to distract him as he did
it up, and a little cut upon his chin. I liked a certain humour in
his eyes. I watched, too, with the fascination that things have for an
observant boy, the play of his lips--they were a little oblique, and
there was something "slipshod," if one may strain a word so far, about
his mouth, so that he lisped and sibilated ever and again and the coming
and going of a curious expression, triumphant in quality it was, upon
his face as he talked. He fingered his glasses, which did not seem to
fit his nose, fretted with things in his waistcoat pockets or put his
hands behind him, looked over our heads, and ever and again rose to his
toes and dropped back on his heels. He had a way of drawing air in at
times through his teeth that gave a whispering zest to his speech It's a
sound I can only represent as a soft Zzzz.

He did most of the talking. My mother repeated what she had already said
in the shop, "I have brought George over to you," and then desisted
for a time from the real business in hand. "You find this a
comfortable house?" she asked; and this being affirmed: "It looks--very
convenient.... Not too big to be a trouble--no. You like Wimblehurst, I
suppose?"

My uncle retorted with some inquiries about the great people of
Bladesover, and my mother answered in the character of a personal friend
of Lady Drew's. The talk hung for a time, and then my uncle embarked
upon a dissertation upon Wimblehurst.

"This place," he began, "isn't of course quite the place I ought to be
in."

My mother nodded as though she had expected that.

"It gives me no Scope," he went on. "It's dead-and-alive. Nothing
happens."

"He's always wanting something to happen," said my aunt Susan. "Some day
he'll get a shower of things and they'll be too much for him."

"Not they," said my uncle, buoyantly.

"Do you find business--slack?" asked my mother.

"Oh! one rubs along. But there's no Development--no growth. They just
come along here and buy pills when they want 'em--and a horseball or
such. They've got to be ill before there's a prescription. That sort
they are. You can't get 'em to launch out, you can't get 'em to take up
anything new. For instance, I've been trying lately--induce them to buy
their medicines in advance, and in larger quantities. But they won't
look for it! Then I tried to float a little notion of mine, sort of an
insurance scheme for colds; you pay so much a week, and when you