That same evening Uncle Jenico arrived. I was just put to bed at the time, but he came and stood by me a little before I went to sleep and dreamt of him. He was not the least grown from his place in my memory—only, to my wonder, a little more shabby-looking than I seemed to recollect¹. The round gold spectacles were there, and the big beaver² hat, and the blue frock coat, and the nankeen trousers, and the limp—all but the first and last a trifle the worse for wear. His smile, however, was as cherubic, his despatch-box as glossy³, his walking-stick as stout⁴ as ever; and he nodded at me like a benevolent⁵ Mandarin⁶.

 

“Only we two left, my boy,” he said. “Poor papa, dear papa! He’s learnt by now the secret of perpetual motion.”

 

It was an odd introduction. I cried a little, and, moved by his kindness, clung to him.

 

“There!” he said, soothing⁷ me. “That’s all right. We are going to be famous friends, we are. We’ll invent things; we’ll set the Thames on fire, we will.”

 

Whether from exhaustion⁸ or from the dreamy contemplation of this amazing feat⁹ to be performed by us, I fell asleep in his arms, lulled¹⁰ for the first time out of my grief, and did not awake till bright morning. The fog was gone; the birds were singing to us to carry my father to his rest under the blue sky.

 

By-and-by we set out, Uncle Jenico very grave, in black, with a long weeper round his hat. Mr. Quayle, and one or two more, who had lingered a day behind the Assizes to do honour to the dead, came with us; and others, including the judge, sent flowers. It was a simple, pathetic service, in a green corner of the churchyard. I felt more than understood its beauty, and when once I caught a glimpse of Uncle Jenico busily and stealthily writing something with a pencil on the inside

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