since. And, after all, there are considerably worse names by which one
might be called.

'What the dickens!' he said, as he finished reading the letter.

'Tell us the worst,' said Marriott. 'You must read it out now out of
common decency, after rousing our expectations like that.'

'All right! It isn't private. It's from an aunt of mine.'

'Seems to be a perfect glut of aunts,' said Marriott. 'What views has
your representative got to air? Is _she_ springing any jolly
little fellow full of spirits on this happy community?'

'No, it's not that. It's only an uncle of mine who's coming down here.
He's coming tomorrow, and I'm to meet him. The uncanny part of it is
that I've never heard of him before in my life.'

'That reminds me of a story I heard--' began Reece slowly. Reece's
observations were not frequent, but when they came, did so for the most
part in anecdotal shape. Somebody was constantly doing something which
reminded him of something he had heard somewhere from somebody. The
unfortunate part of it was that he exuded these reminiscences at such a
leisurely rate of speed that he was rarely known to succeed in
finishing any of them. He resembled those serial stories which appear
in papers destined at a moderate price to fill an obvious void, and
which break off abruptly at the third chapter, owing to the premature
decease of the said periodicals. On this occasion Marriott cut in with
a few sage remarks on the subject of uncles as a class. 'Uncles,' he
said, 'are tricky. You never know where you've got 'em. You think