When I returned, my uncle had in some remarkable way become larger and
central. “Tha’chu, George?” he cried, when the shop-door bell sounded.
“Come right through”; and I found him, as it were, in the chairman’s
place before the draped grate.
The three of them regarded me.
“We have been talking of making you a chemist, George,” said my uncle.
My mother looked at me. “I had hoped,” she said, “that Lady Drew would
have done something for him—” She stopped.
“In what way?” said my uncle.
“She might have spoken to some one, got him into something perhaps....”
She had the servant’s invincible persuasion that all good things are
done by patronage.
“He is not the sort of boy for whom things are done,” she added,
dismissing these dreams. “He doesn’t accommodate himself. When he
thinks Lady Drew wishes a thing, he seems not to wish it. Towards Mr.
Redgrave, too, he has been—disrespectful—he is like his father.”
“Who’s Mr. Redgrave?”
“The Vicar.”
“A bit independent?” said my uncle, briskly.
“Disobedient,” said my mother. “He has no idea of his place. He seems
to think he can get on by slighting people and flouting them. He’ll
learn perhaps before it is too late.”
My uncle stroked his cut chin and me. “Have you learnt any Latin?” he
asked abruptly.