The town was ringed with fire, and out of that magic circle, like Siegfried, Uncle Percy came. The sunset flamed up the hill and wrapped the top of the monument in crocus shadows, the garden of the Coles was rose and amber.

Mary and Jeremy were hanging over the banisters watching for the arrival. The windows behind them burnt with the sun, and their bodies also burnt and their hair was in flames. In the hall there was green dusk until, at the rumble of the cab, Emily suddenly lit the gas, and the umbrellas and Landseer’s “Dignity and Impudence” were magnificently revealed.

The door opened, and out of the evening sun into the hissing gas stepped Uncle Percy. The children heard him say:

“Mrs. Cole at home?” and his voice was roaring, laughing, vibrating, resounding tumultuous. He seemed in his rough grey overcoat too huge to be human, and when this was taken from him by the smiling Emily—she always smiled, as Jeremy had long since observed, at gentlemen more than at ladies—in his bright brown tweeds he was still huge, and, with his brown hair and red face, like a solid chunk of sunset thrown into the dark house to cheer it up. He went bursting up the staircase, and the children fled—only just in time.

From the schoolroom they heard him erupt into the drawing-room, and then the bumping of his box up the stairs and the swearing of the cabman.

This was their Uncle Percy from California, South America, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and anywhere else you like; the brother of their father, the only prosperous one of that family, prosperous, according to Aunt Amy, because for twenty years he had kept away from England; according to father, because he had always had wonderful health, even as a very small boy; and to Uncle Samuel because he had never married—although that was a strange reason for Uncle Samuel to give, because he also had never married, and he could not, with the best wish in the world, be said to be prosperous.

It had been sprung upon them all with the utmost suddenness that he was coming to pay them a visit. They had but just returned from Caerlyon and the sea—in another ten days Jeremy would be off to school again—when the telegram arrived that threw them all into such perturbation. “Arrive eleventh. Hope you can put me up for day or two—Percy.” Percy! Fortunately there was for them in the whole world only one Percy or they might have been in sad confusion, because their Percy was, they imagined, safe in the suburbs of Auckland, New Zealand. A letter followed confirming the telegram. Mr. Cole had not seen his brother for twenty years. They had received one photograph of a large fat staring man on a large fat staring horse. Such thighs, such a back, both of man and of horse! “Feed their animals well in New Zealand” was Uncle Samuel’s only comment, and he, back only that minute from painting the moors, departed at a moment’s notice for London.

“Don’t you want to see Uncle Percy?” asked Jeremy.

“I shall see him better if I study him from a distance,” said Uncle Samuel. “He’s too large to see properly close to,” and he went—voted selfish by all because he would not help in the entertaining. “Of course I’m selfish,” said Uncle Samuel. “No one else cares tuppence about me, so where should I be if I didn’t look after myself?”

In any case their Uncle Percy actually was shut into the drawing-room, and five minutes later the children were sent for.

It had not been intended that Hamlet should enter with them, but he had a way of suddenly appearing from nowhere and joining, unobtrusively, any company that he thought pleasant and amusing. To-day, however, he was anything but unobtrusive; at the sudden shock of that red flaming figure with legs spread wide across the centre of the carpet he drew himself together and barked like a mad thing. Nothing would quiet him, and when Jeremy dragged him into the passage and left him there he still barked and barked and barked, quivering all over, in a perfect frenzy of indignation and horror. He had then to be taken to Jeremy’s bedroom on the top floor and shut in, and there, too, he barked, stopping only once and again for a howl. All this disturbed Uncle Percy’s greeting of the children, but he did not seem to mind. It was obvious at once that nothing could upset him. Jeremy simply could not take his eyes off him, off his brown, almost carroty, hair that stood on end almost like an aureole, off his purple cheeks and flat red nose and thick red neck, off his flaming purple tie, his waistcoat of red and brown squares, his bulging thighs, his tartan socks. This his father’s brother, the brother of his father who sat now, the dim shadow of a shade, pale and apprehensive upon the sofa. The brother of his father! Impossible! How could it be possible?

“Well, kid, what are you staring at?” came suddenly to him. “Know your old uncle again, hey? Think you’ll recognize him if you meet him in the Strand, ho? Know him anywhere, won’t you, ha? A likely kid that of yours, Herbert. Come and talk to your uncle, boy—come and talk to your uncle.”

Jeremy moved across the carpet slowly; he was deeply embarrassed, conscious of the solemn gaze of Aunt Amy, of Helen and Mary. A great red hand fell upon his shoulder. He felt himself suddenly caught up by the slack of his pants, held in mid-air, then dropped, cascades of laughter billowing meanwhile around him.

“That’s a fine boy, hey? That’s what we do to boys in New Zealand to make ’em grow. Want to grow, hey? Be a bigger man than your father, ho? Well, that won’t be difficult, anyway. Never were much of a size, were you, Herbert? Well, boy, go to school?”

“Yes,” said Jeremy.

“Like it?”

“Yes,” said Jeremy.

“Bully the boys smaller than yourself?”

“No,” said Jeremy.

“Bet you do. I always did when I was at school. Any good at games?”

“No,” said Jeremy, suddenly to his own surprise determining that he would tell his uncle nothing.

“That’s like your father. Never any good at games, were you, Herbert? Remember when we tossed you in a blanket and your head bumped on the ceiling?”

Mr. Cole gave a sickly smile.

“That was a lark. I can see it as though it were yesterday. With your legs sticking out of your nightdress——”

Luckily at this point tea arrived, and everyone was very busy. Uncle Percy sat down and then was suddenly aware of Helen. She was looking her prettiest in her blue silk; she knew better than to push herself forward. She had waited patiently through all the examination of Jeremy, certain that her time would come. And it did.

“Why, there’s a pretty one!” he jerked his great body upwards. “Why, I hardly saw you just now! And you’re Helen!”

“Yes, uncle.” She smiled that smile so beautifully designed for worth-while relations.

He stared at her with all his eyes. “Why, you’re a beauty, ’pon my soul, you are! Come and sit here beside your old uncle and tell him how all the boys run after you. I’m sure they do if boys are still the same as when I was young. Come along, now, and tell me all about it.”

Helen demurely “came along,” sat beside her uncle and answered his questions with exactly the right mixture of deference and humour. She brought him his tea and his cake, and was the perfect hostess—a much better hostess, as Jeremy noticed, than her mother; and noticing it, hated her for it.