Jill poured out a cup of tea for her visitor, and looked at the clock.
“I wonder where Uncle Chris has got to,” she said. “He ought to be here by now. I hope he hasn’t got into any mischief among the wild stock-brokers down at Brighton.”
Freddie laid down his cup on the table and uttered a loud snort.
“Oh, Freddie, darling!” said Jill remorsefully. “I forgot! Stock-brokers are a painful subject, aren’t they!” She turned to Nelly. “There’s been an awful slump on the Stock Exchange today, and he got—what was the word, Freddie?”
“Nipped!” said Freddie with gloom.
“Nipped!”
“Nipped like the dickens!”
“Nipped like the dickens!” Jill smiled at Nelly. “He had forgotten all about it in the excitement of being a jailbird, and I went and reminded him.”
Freddie sought sympathy from Nelly.
“A silly ass at the club named Jimmy Monroe told me to take a flutter in some rotten thing called Amalgamated Dyes. You know how it is, when you’re feeling devilish fit and cheery and all that after dinner, and somebody sidles up to you and slips his little hand in yours and tells you to do some fool thing. You’re so dashed nappy you simply say ‘Right-ho, old bird! Make it so!’ That’s the way I got had!”
Jill laughed unfeelingly.
“It will do you good, Freddie. It’ll stir you up and prevent you being so silly again. Besides, you know you’ll hardly notice it. You’ve much too much money as it is.”
“It’s not the money. It’s the principle of the thing. I hate looking a frightful chump.”
“Well, you needn’t tell anybody. We’ll keep it a secret. In fact, we’ll start at once, for I hear Uncle Chris outside. Let us dissemble. We are observed!— Hullo, Uncle Chris!”
She ran down the room, as the door opened, and kissed the tall, soldierly man who entered.
“Well, Jill, my dear.”
“How late you are. I was expecting you hours ago.”
“I had to call on my broker.”
“Hush! Hush!”
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing, nothing. — We’ve got visitors. You know Freddie Rooke, of course?”
“How are you, Freddie, my boy?”
“Cheerio!” said Freddie. “Pretty fit?”
“And Miss Bryant,” said Jill.
“How do you do?” said Uncle Chris in the bluff, genial way which, in his younger days, had charmed many a five-pound note out of the pockets of his fellow-men and many a soft glance out of the eyes of their sisters, their cousins, and their aunts.
“Come and have some tea,” said Jill. “You’re just in time.”
Nelly had subsided shyly into the depths of her big armchair. Somehow she felt a better and a more important girl since Uncle Chris had addressed her. Most people felt like hat after encountering Jill’s Uncle Christopher. Uncle Chris had a manner. It was not precisely condescending, and yet it was not the manner of an equal. He treated you as an equal, true, but all the time you were conscious of the fact that it was extraordinarily good of him to do so. Uncle Chris affected the rank and file of his fellow-men much as a genial knight of the Middle Ages would have affected a scurvy knave or varlet if he had cast aside social distinctions for awhile and hobnobbed with the latter in a tavern. He never patronized, but the mere fact that he abstained from patronizing seemed somehow impressive.
To this impressiveness his appearance contributed largely. He was a fine, upstanding man, who looked less than his forty-nine years in spite of an ominous thinning of the hair which he tended and brushed so carefully. He had a firm chin, a mouth that smiled often and pleasantly beneath the closely-clipped moustache, and very bright blue eyes which met yours in a clear, frank, honest gaze. Though he had served in his youth in India, he had none of the Anglo-Indian’s sun-scorched sallowness. His complexion was fresh and sanguine. He looked as if he had just stepped out of a cold tub,—a misleading impression, for Uncle Chris detested cold water and always took his morning bath as hot as he could get it.
It was his clothes, however, which, even more than his appearance, fascinated the populace. There is only one tailor in London, as distinguished from the ambitious mechanics who make coats and trousers, and Uncle Chris was his best customer. Similarly, London is full of young fellows trying to get along by the manufacture of foot-wear, but there is only one boot-maker in the true meaning of the word,—the one who supplied Uncle Chris. And, as for hats, while it is no doubt a fact that you can get at plenty of London shops some sort of covering for your head which will keep it warm, the only hatter—using the term in its deeper sense—is the man who enjoyed the patronage of Major Christopher Selby. From foot to head, in short, from furthest South to extremest North, Uncle Chris was perfect. He was an ornament to his surroundings. The Metropolis looked better for him. One seems to picture London as a mother with a horde of untidy children, children with made-up ties, children with wrinkled coats and baggy trouser-legs, sighing to herself as she beheld them, then cheering up and murmuring with a touch of restored complacency, “Ah, well, I still have Uncle Chris!”