in his wrinkled and
trembling hand. He had a simple, moonlike face, to which his baldness
lent a deceptive appearance of intellect, and his expression was of such
bland and smiling goodness that it was impossible to resent the tedious
garrulity of his conversation. In the midst of his shrivelled
countenance his eyes looked like little round blue buttons which had
been set there in order to keep his features from entirely slipping
away. He was the oldest member of the Wilde family, and he had lived in
the house in Gramercy Park since it was built by his father some sixty
years or more ago.

"Tired waiting, Uncle Percival?" asked Laura, raising her voice a little
that it might penetrate his deafened hearing.

As he turned upon her his smile of perfect patience the old gentleman
nodded his head quickly several times in succession. "I waited to play
until after the people went," he responded in a voice that sounded like
a cracked silver bell. "Your Aunt Angela has a headache, so she couldn't
stand the noise. I went out to get her some flowers and offered to sit
with her, but this is one of her bad days, poor girl." He fell silent
for a minute and then added, wistfully, "I'm wondering if you would like
to hear 'Ye Banks and Braes o' Bonnie Doon'? It used to be your mother's
favourite air."

Though he was an inoffensively amiable and eagerly obliging old man, by
some ironic contradiction of his intentions his life had become a series
of blunders through which he endeavoured to add his share to the general
happiness. His soul was overflowing with humanity, and he spent
sleepless nights evolving innocent pleasures for those about him, but
his excess of goodness invariably resulted in producing petty annoyances
if not serious inconveniences. So his virtues had come to be regarded
with timidity, and there was an ever present anxiety in the air as to
what Uncle Percival was "doing" in his mind. The fear of inopportune
benefits was in its way as oppressive as the dread of unmerited
misfortune.

Laura shook her head impatiently as she threw herself into a chair on
the other side of the tall bronze lamp upon the writing table. On the
stem of an eccentric family tree she was felt to be the perfect flower
of artistic impulses, and her enclosed life in the sombre old house had
not succeeded in cultivating in her the slightest resemblance to an
artificial variety. She was obviously, inevitably, impulsively the
original product, and