. After breakfast
Flora would go off by herself for a long walk and Captain Anthony (Mrs
Fyne referred to him at times also as Roderick) joined the children.
But he was actually too shy to get on terms with his own nieces.

This would have sounded pathetic if I hadn't known the Fyne children who
were at the same time solemn and malicious, and nursed a secret contempt
for all the world. No one could get on terms with those fresh and
comely young monsters! They just tolerated their parents and seemed to
have a sort of mocking understanding among themselves against all
outsiders, yet with no visible affection for each other. They had the
habit of exchanging derisive glances which to a shy man must have been
very trying. They thought their uncle no doubt a bore and perhaps an
ass.

I was not surprised to hear that very soon Anthony formed the habit of
crossing the two neighbouring fields to seek the shade of a clump of
elms at a good distance from the cottage. He lay on the grass and
smoked his pipe all the morning. Mrs Fyne wondered at her brother's
indolent habits. He had asked for books it is true but there were but
few in the cottage. He read them through in three days and then
continued to lie contentedly on his back with no other companion but his
pipe. Amazing indolence! The live-long morning, Mrs Fyne, busy
writing upstairs in the cottage, could see him out of the window. She
had a very long sight, and these elms were grouped on a rise of the
ground. His indolence was plainly exposed to her criticism on a gentle
green slope. Mrs Fyne wondered at it; she was disgusted too. But
having just then `commenced author,' as you know, she could not tear
herself away from the fascinating novelty. She let him wallow in his
vice. I imagine Captain Anthony must have had a rather pleasant time in
a quiet way. It was, I remember, a hot dry summer, favourable to
contemplative life out of doors. And Mrs Fyne was scandalised. Women
don't understand the force of a contemplative temperament. It simply
shocks them. They feel instinctively that it is the one which escapes
best the domination of feminine influences. The dear girls were
exchanging jeering remarks about "lazy uncle Roderick" openly, in her
indulgent hearing. And it was so strange, she told me, because as a boy
he was anything but indolent. On the contrary. Always active.

I remarked that a man of thirty-five was no longer a boy. It was an
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