entering the passage, and a loud voice
exclaiming, 'All in, hey? and at dinner, are they? Very well, my dear;
tell 'em I'm here. I know my way in.'

'It's Uncle Solomon!' went round the table. They refrained from any
outward expression of joy, because they were naturally a quiet family.

'Well,' said Mrs. Ashburn, who seemed to put her own construction on
this reserve, 'and I'm sure if there is any table at which my only
brother Solomon should be a welcome guest, it's _this_ table.'

'Quite so, my dear; quite so,' said Mr. Ashburn, hastily. 'He was here
last week; but we're all glad to see him at any time, I'm sure.'

'I hope so, indeed! Go in, Trixie, and help your uncle off with his
coat,' for there were snorting and puffing signs from the next room,
as if their relative were in difficulties; but before Trixie could
rise the voice was heard again, 'That's it, Ann, thanky--you're called
Ann, aren't you? I thought so. Ah, how's the baker, Ann--wasn't it
the baker I caught down the airy now? _wasn't_ it, hey?'

And then a large red-faced person came in, with a puffy important
mouth, a fringe of whiskers meeting under his chin, and what Trixie,
in speaking privately of her relative's personal appearance, described
as 'little piggy eyes,' which had, however, a twinkle of a rather
primitive kind of humour in them.

Solomon Lightowler was a brother of Mrs. Ashburn's, a retired business
man, who had amassed a considerable fortune in the hardware trade.

He was a widower and without children, and it was he who, fired with
the ambition of placing a nephew in the Indian Civil Service as a
rising monument to his uncle's perception, had sent Mark to the
crammer's--for Mr. Ashburn's position in the Inland Revenue Office
would scarcely have warranted such an outlay.

Mark's performances at his first examination, as has been said, had
not been calculated to encourage his uncle's hopes, but the latter had
been slightly mollified by his nephew's spirit in carrying off the
Cambridge scholarship soon afterwards, and with the idea of having one
more attempt to 'see his money back,' Mr. Lightowler had consented to
keep him for the necessary time at the University. When that
experiment also had ended in disaster, Uncle Solomon seemed at one
time to have given him up in disgust, only reserving himself, as the
sole value for his money, the liberty of reproach, and Mark was of
opinion that he had already gone far towards recouping hims