knives, and into
the freshly varnished, spacious chimney up which no dancing blaze had
ever whirled in madcap glee since the mason's trowel had left it and
never would to the end of time,--not as long as the steam heat held
out; had watched the crane-like step of Parkins as he moved about the
room--cold, immaculate, impassive; had listened to his "Yes, sir--thank
you, sir, very good, sir," until he wanted to take him by the throat and
shake something spontaneous and human out of him, and as each cheerless
feature passed in review his spirits had sunk lower and lower.

This, then, was what he could expect as long as he lived under his
uncle's roof--a period of time which seemed to him must stretch out
into dim futurity. No laughing halloos from passing neighbors through
wide-open windows; no Aunt Hannahs running in with a plate of cakes
fresh from the griddle which would cool too quickly if she waited for
that slow-coach of a Tom to bring them to her young master. No sweep of
leaf-covered hills seen through bending branches laden with blossoms; no
stretch of sky or slant of sunshine; only a grim, funereal, artificial
formality, as ungenial and flattening to a boy of his tastes, education
and earlier environment as a State asylum's would have been to a red
Indian fresh from the prairie.

On the morning after Morris's dinner (within eight hours really of the
time when he had been so thrilled by the singing of the Doxology), Jack
was in his accustomed seat at the small, adjustable accordion-built
table--it could be stretched out to accommodate twenty-four covers--when
his uncle entered this room. Parkins was genuflecting at the time with
his--"Cream, sir,--yes, sir. Devilled kidney, sir? Thank you, sir."
(Parkins had been second man with Lord Colchester, so he told Breen when
he hired him.) Jack had about made up his mind to order him out when
a peculiar tone in his uncle's "Good morning" made the boy scan that
gentleman's face and figure the closer.

His uncle was as well dressed as usual, looking as neat and as smart
in his dark cut-away coat with the invariable red carnation in his
buttonhole, but the boy's quick eye caught the marks of a certain wear
and tear in the face which neither his bath nor his valet had been able
to obliterate. The thin lips--thin for a man so fat, and which showed,
more than any other feature, something of the desultory firmness of his
character--drooped at the corners. The eyes were half the