len, if she was caught up in one of Mark's
narratives, would twitch until it was finished, when she would rub her
forehead with an acorn of menthol and wrap herself more closely in a
shawl of soft Shetland wool. The antipathy that formerly existed between
Mark and his father was much sharper between Mark and his uncle. It was
born in the instant of their first meeting, when Uncle Henry bent over,
his trunk at right angles to his legs, so that one could fancy the
pelvic bones to be clicking like the wooden joints of a monkey on a
stick, and offered his nephew an acrid whisker to be saluted.

"And what is Mark going to be?" Uncle Henry inquired.

"A lighthouse-keeper."

"Ah, we all have suchlike ambitions when we are young. I remember that
for nearly a year I intended to be a muffin-man," said Uncle Henry
severely.

Mark hated his uncle from that moment, and he fixed upon the throbbing
pulse of his scraped-out temples as the feature upon which that dislike
should henceforth be concentrated. Uncle Henry's pulse seemed to express
all the vitality that was left to him; Mark thought that Our Lord must
have felt about the barren fig-tree much as he felt about Uncle Henry.

Aunt Helen annoyed Mark in the way that one is annoyed by a cushion in
an easy chair. It is soft and apparently comfortable, but after a minute
or two one realizes that it is superfluous, and it is pushed over the
arm to the floor. Unfortunately Aunt Helen could not be treated like a
cushion; and there she was soft and comfortable in appearance, but
forever in Mark's way. Aunt Helen was the incarnation of her own
drawing-room. Her face was round and stupid like a clock's; she wore
brocaded gowns and carpet slippers; her shawls resembled antimacassars;
her hair was like the stuff that is put in grates during the summer; her
caps were like lace curtains tied back with velvet ribbons; cameos leant
against her bosom as if they were upon a mantelpiece. Mark never
overcame his dislike of kissing Aunt Helen, for it gave him a sensation
every time that a bit of her might stick to his lips. He lacked that
solemn sense of relationship with which most children are imbued, and
the compulsory intimacy offended him, particularly when his aunt
referred to little boys generically as if they were beetles or mice. Her
inability to appreciate that he was Mark outraged his young sense of
personality which was further dishonoured by the manner in which she
spoke of herself