sir, very good, sir," until he wanted to take him by the throat
and shake something spontaneous and human out of him, and as each
cheerless feature passed in review his spirits had sunk lower and
lower.

This, then, was what he could expect as long as he lived under his
uncle's roof--a period of time which seemed to him must stretch
out into dim futurity. No laughing halloos from passing neighbors
through wide-open windows; no Aunt Hannahs running in with a plate
of cakes fresh from the griddle which would cool too quickly if
she waited for that slow-coach of a Tom to bring them to her young
master. No sweep of leaf-covered hills seen through bending
branches laden with blossoms; no stretch of sky or slant of
sunshine; only a grim, funereal, artificial formality, as ungenial
and flattening to a boy of his tastes, education and earlier
environment as a State asylum's would have been to a red Indian
fresh from the prairie.

On the morning after Morris's dinner (within eight hours really of
the time when he had been so thrilled by the singing of the
Doxology), Jack was in his accustomed seat at the small,
adjustable accordion-built table--it could be stretched out to
accommodate twenty-four covers--when his uncle entered this room.
Parkins was genuflecting at the time with his--"Cream, sir,--yes,
sir. Devilled kidney, sir? Thank you, sir." (Parkins had been
second man with Lord Colchester, so he told Breen when he hired
him.) Jack had about made up his mind to order him out when a
peculiar tone in his uncle's "Good morning" made the boy scan that
gentleman's face and figure the closer.