UNCLE BLISS was an hour in her knitting, did not answer late. Naturally it was an hour at first. "Four light, three of conjecture. None of us had dark, two light.-Tame, did ever seen him except Angela, you say? No, I certainly and Angela was not very good should not call him tame. at answering questions. She That does not at all describe could be extremely vivid, him." though, when she was not being catechised. All we had extracted from her so far was that he was CC rather an out-of-door sort of person." And "hairy." And "hairy." We had to be content with that for the physical picture. To the children at least it was full of suggestion. "Out-of-door and hairy!" Irene repeated. "Mummy, how exciting! Is he like an animal? "" "No, dear. Not in the least." "Is he tame?" Val asked. "I mean, is he like a tame animal? Angela, who was absorbed At this Irene danced with excitement. "Mummy! How lovely! A wild animal! he like a bear? Is heard Mummy tell Daddy that Uncle Bliss was rolling. "I expect that he walks like the bear at the Zoo," he added. Irene in her superior wisdom enlightened him. "Rolling means rich," she said. "RollsRoyce and all that. Mummy said he would come in a RollsRoyce." "But who is he like?" Irene persisted. "He must be like somebody." Angela looked at her, and seemed to be searching her memory. "No," she said, "I don't think he is like anybody." head and shoulders, a new way of looking at people and considering things, a new way of hanging a hat on a peg. The simplest problem in individuality is as mysterious as the higher mathematics. I had often heard of Uncle Bliss, but I had never tried to picture him before. Not consciously. Now I had a vision of the stage AngloIndian Colonel in the empty chair with a sola topi on his knee. I suppose because I had heard that he had travelled a great deal in tropical countries and collected thingsrather indiscriminately, so far as I could gather. One or two of his white elephants had come to us at Homersfield. Uncle Bliss, by the way, was nobody's uncle, not even a relation. Our only claim to kinship was that he happened to be Irene's godfather; even how that came about I had forgotten. "I have only seerf him twice," Angela continued, " and he was different each time." I had been rather bored with the idea of entertaining Uncle Bliss all the afternoon, but I was beginning to be infected by the children's curiosity. Irene was right. When you come to think of it, everybody is interesting until you know them. In five minutes there would be a new person in the room, different from anybody I had seen before. An empty place at a table in a hotel or restaurant raises a profoundly interesting problem if one has a curious mind. Presently some one will come in and sit down at it. A new face. If after the millions of faces one has seen it is possible to conjure one more variety out of the same old recipe-a round or oval cranium with six apertures in it, seven if one counts the nostrils as two. And the face is only the beginning of the enigma. There will be a new voice allied with it, a new manner, new movements of the and "hairy." Now if she remembered that he was different, she must remember what he was like-in one of these encounters, if not in both. I knew Angela could give us more details if she chose. But she was like that. It was a kind of obstinacy. When challenged, her mind became too indolent for precision. Still "different each time" was a clue. Uncle Bliss was a man of moods as well as being an out-of-door sort of person Irene's picture of the bear seemed quite plausible. "Of course, lunch was spoilt an hour ago,' Angela complained; "but if people only think of themselves bring him in," Angela suggested. I obeyed. Uncle Bliss was so absorbed that he did not hear my steps. on the gravel. "Oh, how do you do?" he said when I "He has probably had a greeted him. "Clayton, of course. I see you've got the Pyrenean androsace." puncture," I suggested. We had agreed to give Uncle Bliss another five minutes, when I looked out of the window and saw him in the garden. How silently that Rolls-Royce had come up! Not a sound of the engine or wheels on the gravel, or the motor-horn we had been listening for. Where was the car, by the way? And what the devil was he doing poking about in the garden? Why didn't he come up to the door and ring? I was SO intrigued by his movements that I forgot to compare the concrete Uncle Bliss with my mental inventory. Irene's quick eyes detected my astonishment. She flew to the window. "Mummy!" she cried, "quick! He's here. In the garden. Why doesn't he come in? Angela carefully put aside her knitting and joined us at the window. Her movements never express surprise, but there was just an inflection of it in her voice. "Well, I never ! she said. Uncle Bliss was botanising in the rock garden as if he had the whole day in front of him instead of being nearly an hour late. Irene was the first to notice his bicycle leaning against the catalpa. Uncle Bliss ignored the suggestion. Your androsace is starved for soil," he said, "and it wants more shade. Did you say lunch was ready?" I explained to him that it was past two. "Your clocks are all wrong," he retorted pleasantly. "How ever, I am quite ready for lunch, rather peckish, in fact. I thought you were in the Sudan," he observed, as he wheeled his bicycle farther into the shade. "I ought to be," I said, "but the Medical Board turned me down. I've got to go up and be vetted again in October." To this Uncle Bliss made no reply. He seemed to have lost the context. As I escorted him in across the lawn, I could see the children at the window-their eyes stretched to Oes, no doubtfidgeting with excitement. Angela, of course, was not spying. She would be knitting quietly in the recesses of the drawing-room, as if Uncle Bliss' "You had better go out and invasions were a daily event, Or a I thought of our hour of con- the character of Uncle Bliss. jecture. Here was the new One more instance of the variety of Homo sapiens. Quite secular triumph of matter over a distinct species. With the mind. children's gaze upon me I felt rather like a showman. bear-leader, shall I say? Irene had got it in two guesses. Val, too, had reason to be satisfied with Uncle Bliss' roll. Our guest did not exactly lurch or shamble, but there was something in the movement of his shoulders, a kind of alternate rhythm, which one might, without exaggeration, describe as a roll. He was as completely unself-conscious as an animal, or, one might say, unconscious of others of his own species. Awkwardness and unself-consciousness. There again you have the bear. And he spoke with a bearlike gruffness, though not ungenially. I could see that the children were afraid he was going to kiss them, or hug them, which would have been more in character and, perhaps, not so unpleasant, as his hairiness was of the bristling variety. He shook hands with us all in turn, but did not seem to notice any of us much. Are you fond of games ? he said to Val. "Yes, that's right." And to Irene, "You like games, don't you? Yes, that's right. We shall see." And here he tapped his pocket. At this cryptic utterance and gesture the children's eyes became glued on Uncle Bliss' pockets, which were bulging. The character of those bulges was now more interesting than Uncle Bliss was so heavily encumbered that I was surprised he did not unload in the hall. But no. The dining-room door was open, displaying an array of agreeable objects on the sideboard, and he visibly gravitated towards it, carrying us with him. A quite unconscious manœuvre, I believe, but irresistible. Uncle Bliss had what you might call a dynamic way with him; I was going to say magnetic, but it was propulsion rather than attraction. He waved aside Angela's suggestion that he might like to wash his hands. before lunch. He was hungry, he explained; but it did not seem to enter his head that we might be hungry too, and that he had kept us waiting an hour. So he sat down, hot and hungry just as he was, talking incessantly, mostly about the androsace. Some one had sent it to Angela from Simla, but Uncle Bliss insisted that it was an exclusively Pyrenean variety. If it had been found at Simla, some one had planted it there. "You probably mixed the seeds," he said. "After lunch I will dig it up for you, and show you how it ought to be planted." Angela smiled gratefully, though I knew that if Uncle Bliss, or any one else, laid a finger on her androsace, it could only be by an act of violence. Again I could have kicked him. I know no woman who dresses with such subtle distinction as Angela. She was wearing a light gossamer dress which hung straight from her shoulders, and revealed a new grace of outline whenever she moved. It was the most perfect garment for a hot June day, of a shade of green you only see in dragon-flies. It made you feel cool to look at her. If she had been a dragonfly, Uncle Bliss would have noticed her ; or if she had been an aboriginal bushwoman, he could have told you what she was wearing. Anthropology was another of his hobbies. Uncle Bliss, Angela's antithesis in the category of Homo sapiens, looked far from cool. Drops of perspiration stood on his forehead and nose, and no doubt irrigated the scrubland that stretched upwards from his beard on each side of his face to meet his close-cropped hair. Nevertheless he rejected our iced claret cup. "No," he said, "thank you. I will have some whisky. My own, if you don't mind. I always make a point of bringing it with me." This was very polite for Uncle Bliss. He might have added, "You never know what you will get in other peoples' houses." Luckily we had the necessary siphon. Irene and Val had been unnaturally quiet, but they had forgotten Angela's injunction not to stare. I watched their eyes open wide as the whisky gurgled and bubbled from Uncle Bliss' flask into his glass. The extraction of this huge vessel from his pocket, by the way, removed one of the most promising bulges. There had been talk about gifts, and in the discussion I had overheard before lunch anticipation was heightened by Irene's definition of "rolling." The bicycle, I believe, was the first disappointment. And the whisky flask must have left a big hole in the prospective inventory. I was afraid the children were going to be disillusioned. However, Uncle Bliss played up in his own way before very long. We had been trying to get him to tell us about the Clapperhouse at Renton Parva, that desirable country mansion" with its thousand-acre park. Old Slingsby, the M.F.H., |