the Manor rather
than himself going to the Vicarage. He had never got over the idea bred
in him by association with the Parson that a priest should not be
married.

Archelaus wandered on to the lawn looking his most spruce; he had
evidently tried to tidy himself, having shaved and put on a clean collar
of extraordinarily antiquated make. His clothes might have had "American
ready-made" written upon them. He advanced towards them slowly, leaning
heavily on his stick.

"Nicky," said Ishmael, "this is your Uncle Archelaus.... This is my
boy."

Nicky got to his feet and said rather coldly that he hoped his uncle was
well, but it was the old man whose eagerness in holding out his hand
made Nicky's advance seem laggard. Nicky had taken a dislike to his
uncle; he could not tell why. He flattered himself he was not a snob,
but he thought this old Rip Van Winkle a terrible thing to drop into
any family out of the blue. Archelaus lowered himself into a chair
beside his nephew and began to try and make conversation. There was
something pathetic about his evident efforts and Nicky's hidden distaste
that was all there was to meet it, masked by courtesy. Ishmael suddenly
felt his heart soften towards his brother; he told himself almost with a
pang that he need not have been afraid that this old prodigal would have
beguiled Nicky as he did the children; his simple wiles were not for
grown men busy with affairs. Yet he still watched anxiously, though now
the faint feeling of anxiety had rather transferred itself from Nicky to
Archelaus.

As the days went on his heart grew no lighter, though in the society of
Nicky, busy as he was with showing him all the latest improvements, he
had not much time to think of anything else. Archelaus was too old and
enfeebled to go all over the estate as Ishmael was still able to do, and
gloried in the doing now he saw that there were others less able to than
he. Yet, had he had more leisure to observe, his anxiety would have
grown, not lessened, for a cloud began to gather upon Archelaus that was
like the old brooding of his youth, though less articulate, but perhaps
none the less dangerous for that. There had been a softening about him
those first days of Nicky's return, as there was still when he played
with Jimmy; but now the look that had held a timid eagerness when it was
turned on Jimmy's father glowed with something else less good, a
something that deepened when it was turned on Ishmael.