alked
along the quiet, dignified street. And then I added hastily: "I hope
you don't think me inquisitive, but, to my mind, he presents himself as
a kind of mysterious abstraction; the unknown quantity of a legal
problem."

"My Uncle John," she answered reflectively, "was a very peculiar man,
rather obstinate, very self-willed, what people call 'masterful,' and
decidedly wrong-headed and unreasonable."

"That is certainly the impression that the terms of his will convey," I
said.

"Yes, and not the will only. There was the absurd allowance that he
made to my father. That was a ridiculous arrangement, and very unfair
too. He ought to have divided the property up as my grandfather
intended. And yet he was by no means ungenerous, only he would have
his own way, and his own way was very commonly the wrong way."

"I remember," she continued, after a short pause, "a very odd instance
of his wrong-headedness and obstinacy. It was a small matter, but very
typical of him. He had in his collection a beautiful little ring of
the eighteenth dynasty. It was said to have belonged to Queen Ti, the
mother of our friend Amenhotep the Fourth; but I don't think that could
have been so, because the device on it was the Eye of Osiris, and Ti,
as you know, was an Aten-worshiper. However, it was a very charming
ring, and Uncle John, who had a queer sort of devotion to the mystical
eye of Osiris, commissioned a very clever goldsmith to make two exact
copies of it, one for himself and one for me. The goldsmith naturally
wanted to take the measurements of our fingers, but this Uncle John
would not hear of; the rings were to be exact copies, and an exact copy
must be the same size as the original. You can imagine the result; my
ring was so loose that I couldn't keep it in my finger, and Uncle
John's was so tight that though he did manage to get it on, he was
never able to get it off. And it was only the circumstance that his
left hand was decidedly smaller than his right that made it possible
for him to wear it all."

"So you never wore your copy?"

"No. I wanted to have it altered to make it fit, but he objected
strongly; so I put it away, and have it in a box still."

"He must have been an extraordinarily pig-headed old fellow," I
remarked.

"Yes; he was very tenacious. He annoyed my father a good deal, too, by
making unnecessary alterations in the house in Queen Square when he
fitted up his museum. We have a certain s