In looks, Uncle Albert Waters was just like the John Bull of the cartoons, minus the hat. In voice, he was Theo through a megaphone. In manner, a genial form of hurricane.

“Now then, now then! How’s everybody?” he blared. “Mary! Blanche! Theo!” (An explosive kiss to each.) “Ha! Billy, my boy!” (A violent blow on the shoulder.) “Major Montresor, glad to see you again—how are you? Still defying the enemy? Splendid!” (A pump-handle shake of the hand.) “Now, Billy!” turning again to my employer. “You needn’t introduce me to your sweetheart. She knows who I am, and what I’ve come for. What I want is to have a good look at her. Young lady,” to me, “will you be kind enough to oblige an old man whose eyesight’s not quite what it was, by turning full to the light?”

I did. What else could I do?

I sat, facing the low flood of late afternoon sunshine, and feeling without seeing that all the others turned a little away from me, while Uncle Albert fixed his prominent, honest grey eyes upon my face and stared at it without reserve for—well! it seemed several of the longest minutes I’d ever known. Then judgment was pronounced.

“Well done, Billy!” Here there would have been another of those heavy blows upon the Governor’s broad shoulder, but he had edged away. “You’ve chosen well, boy. A bonnie girl, and a well-bred one, and one to do you credit. Now, Mary, I’m ready for that tea. And, you, my dear”—meaning me—“pass me the bread and butter. What’s your name, now?”

“My full name is Monica,” I said for the benefit of Major Montresor who had fixed the monocle with something like mild indignation upon the last comer. “They call me Nancy, here.”

“Nancy. A pretty name for a pretty girl, appropriate, too. ‘All my fancy dwells upon Nancy’—eh, William? You used to sing that song once upon a time, dare say you haven’t forgotten it, now?”

And so on, and so forth. I really don’t know how much more of it there was before the dreadful old man had finished his ample tea and was carried off to his room by the Governor in much the same humour, I thought, as he had dragged Cariad and his bone to the back of the house.

A pity Uncle Albert Waters couldn’t be locked up in the tool-house!

I felt like murder when I reached my pretty room at last. What a day it had been! It had seemed forty-eight hours long at least. Beginning with that horrible walk to the station with the Governor—Then there had been the unwelcome appearance of Major Montresor and his clumsy blunderings, first about Sydney and secondly about the old times at home—and now this terrible old Uncle turning up to inspect and blare out his embarrassing verdict upon my looks and suitability; oh, it’s the last straw!

It’s the worst that’s happened yet! There can be nothing to beat the Governor’s Uncle at tea, even though the evening isn’t yet over. I feel as if it were long past bed-time, and there’s only half an hour or so before dressing for dinner! Even half an hour alone——

But I haven’t been allowed a minute of it alone.

The girls fluttered into my room almost as soon as I came up; brimful of sympathy, but not sympathetic enough to keep themselves from laughter.

“Poor dear Nancy! Wasn’t it awful?”

“Didn’t I tell you Uncle Albert was a terror? But you don’t think he really talks like me, Nancy, do you? Billy will say he does!”

“Theo! He can easily hear you from his room, and the window’s open. Oh, I do hope that when I’m engaged my young man won’t have quite such loud relations!”

“Better than having deceitful whispery voices and saying horrid things in them about you behind your back,” retorted Theo. “And anyhow, Uncle Albert did like her!”

“Yes,” said Blanche, deprecatingly, “but isn’t it nearly as terrible as if he disapproved?”

“It’s worse,” I decided to myself as I dressed for dinner, in my white, to please Theo, who apparently has some mysterious child’s reason for wanting me to wear that particular frock to-night. “Even if one were madly in love, a relation like that would be quite enough to make one wonder if it were worth it! Yes! Even if one were really engaged to be married to a man—the man Mr. Waters would ‘pity,’ one would break it off rather than put up with such an uncle-in-law. Well! Thank goodness I’m spared that at all events! I hope Uncle Albert won’t pay many of his visits of inspection during the next year. One or two ought to be enough for him, and I’ve taken the plunge now,” thought I, “and got it over. He can’t go on being much more awful at dinner!”