time I saw him myself he was distinctly rude. He treated me as a boy, though I was getting on for eighteen years of age. I came into his office without knocking; and without looking up from his desk, where he was writing, he said: "Get out! Why do you venture to disturb me when I'm busy? Get out, and be damned to you!" I waited where I was, ready to transfix him with my eye when he should look up, for I cannot forget that when my father dies I shall be Head of my House. But when he did there was no transfixing possible. He said quite coolly:"Oh, it's you, is it? I thought it was one of my office boys. Sit down, if you want to see me, and wait till I am ready." So I sat down and waited. Father always said that I should try to conciliate and please my uncle. Father is a very shrewd man, and Uncle Roger is a very rich one.
But I don't think Uncle R--- is as shrewd as he thinks he is. He sometimes makes awful mistakes in business. For instance, some years ago he bought an enormous estate on the Adriatic, in the country they call the "Land of Blue Mountains." At least, he says he bought it. He told father so in confidence. But he didn't show any title-deeds, and I'm greatly afraid he was "had." A bad job for me that he was, for father believes he paid an enormous sum for it, and as I am his natural heir, it reduces his available estate to so much less.And now about Rupert.  As I have said, he ran away when he was about fourteen, and we did not hear about him for years.  When we--or, rather, my father--did hear of him, it was no good that he heard.  He had gone as a cabin-boy on a sailing ship round the Horn.  Then he joined an exploring party through the centre of Patagonia, and then another up in Alaska, and a third to the Aleutian Islands.  After that he went through Central America, and then to Western Africa, the Pacific Islands, India, and a lot of places.  We all know the wisdom of the adage that "A rolling stone gathers no moss"; and certainly, if there be any value in moss, Cousin Rupert will die a poor man.  Indeed, nothing will stand his idiotic, boastful wastefulness.  Look at the way in which, when he came of age, he made over all his mother's little fortune to the MacSkelpie! I am sure that, though Uncle Roger made no comment to my father, who, as Head of our House, should, of course, have been informed, he was not pleased.  My mother, who has a good fortune in her own right, and has had the sense to keep it in her own control--as I am to inherit it, and it is not in the entail, I am therefore quite impartial--I can approve of her spirited conduct in the matter.  We never did think much of Rupert, anyhow; but now, since he is in the way to be a pauper, and therefore a dangerous nuisance, we look on him as quite an outsider.  We know what he 

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