"You mustn't let him bother you, but he's been so looking forward to your arrival. When is Uncle coming, he kept asking."

"Did he ask why I was coming?"

Hilda looked at her brother blankly, and John made up his mind to try that look on Harold some time.

"Have you got everything you want?" she asked, solicitously.

"He hasn't got his nailbrush," said Harold.

Hilda assumed an expression of exaggerated alarm.

"Oh dear, I hope it hasn't been lost."

"No, no, no, it'll turn up in one of the glass bottles. I was just telling Harold that I haven't really begun my unpacking yet."

"Uncle John's brought me a present from America," Harold proclaimed in accents of greedy pride.

Hilda seized her brother's hand affectionately.

"Now you oughtn't to have done that. It's spoiling him. It really is. Harold never expects presents."

"What a liar," thought John. "But not a bigger one than I am myself," he supplemented, and then he announced aloud that he must go into Galton after lunch and send off an important telegram to his agent.

"I wonder ..." Hilda began, but with an arch look she paused and seemed to thrust aside temptation.

"What?" John weakly asked.

"Why ... but no, he might bore you by walking too slowly. Harold," she added, seriously, "if Uncle John is kind enough to take you into Galton with him, will you be a good boy and leave your butterfly net at home?"

"If I may take my air-gun," Harold agreed.

John rapidly went over in his mind the various places where Harold might be successfully detained while he was in the toyshop, decided that the risk would be too great, pulled himself together, and declined the pleasure of his nephew's company on the ground that he must think over very carefully the phrasing of the telegram he had to send, a mental process, he explained, that Harold might distract.

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