ther hadn't bothered to see ours when he was poor and honest, but now
he was the wealthy sharer of the red-brick, beautiful Blackheath house
it was different. This made us not like Uncle Archibald very much, but
we were too just to blame it on to young Archibald. All the same we
should have liked him better if his father's previous career had not
been of such a worldly and stuck-up sort. Besides, I do think Archibald
is quite the most rotten sort of name. We should have called him
Archie, of course, if he had been at all decent.

"You'll be as jolly to him as you can, I know," Father said; "he's a bit
older than you, Oswald. He's not a bad-looking chap."

Then Father went down and Oswald had to go with him, and there was
Archibald sitting upright in a chair and talking to our Indian uncle as
if he was some beastly grown-up. Our cousin proved to be dark and rather
tall, and though he was only fourteen he was always stroking his lip to
see if his moustache had begun to come.

Father introduced us to each other, and we said, "How do you do?" and
looked at each other, and neither of us could think of anything else to
say. At least Oswald couldn't. So then we went upstairs. Archibald shook
hands with the others, and every one was silent except Dora, and she
only whispered to H.O. to keep his feet still.

You cannot keep for ever in melancholy silence however few things you
have to say, and presently some one said it was a wet day, and this
well-chosen remark made us able to begin to talk.

I do not wish to be injurious to anybody, especially one who was a
Bastable, by birth at least if not according to the nobler attributes,
but I must say that Oswald never did dislike a boy so much as he did
that young Archibald. He was as cocky as though he'd done something to
speak of--been captain of his eleven, or passed a beastly exam., or
something--but we never could find that he had done anything. He was
always bragging about the things he had at home, and the things he was
allowed to do, and all the things he knew all about, but he was a most
untruthful chap. He laughed at Noel's being a poet--a thing we never do,
because it makes him cry and crying makes him ill--and of course Oswald
and Dicky could not punch his head in their own house because of the
laws of hospitableness, and Alice stopped it at last by saying she
didn't care if it was being a sneak, she would tell Father the very next
time. I don't think she would have, be