at the terms of his will convey," I
said.

"Yes; and not the will only. There was the absurd allowance that he made
my father. That was a ridiculous arrangement, and very unfair, too. He
ought to have divided up the property 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-worshipper. 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 on 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 again. 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 at 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 sentiment with regard to that
house. Our people have lived in it ever since it was built, when the
square was first laid out in the reign of Queen Anne, after whom the
square was named. It is a dear old house. Would you like to see it? We
are quite near it now."

I assented eagerly. If it had been a coal-shed or a fried-fish shop I
would still have visited it with pleasure, for the sake of prolonging
our walk; but I was also really interested in thi