Nicky came, charming as ever.  He was so full of life that his forty-odd years seemed nothing to him.  He had that immense vitality, sparkling but full of reserved strength, that brings with it a sense of completeness apart from youth or age.  Ishmael felt the old pang of disappointment that Nicky gave so little, repented of directly some little thing showed how Nicky was thinking of and for him.  Nicky drew his brows together when he heard of his uncle’s advent.  He was a great stickler for the conventions, and did not like this appearance in the flesh of old family scandals that might again become a topic for busy tongues.

Archelaus was out when Nicky arrived, but when the family party was assembled on the lawn for tea he made his appearance.  Everyone was there.  Ruth had driven over from her Vicarage with her two little girls, with whom Jim was playing and occasionally quarrelling; Marjorie sat by Nicky and waited on him with an indulgence she generally showed him on the first day together after they had been separated for a few weeks; and even the volatile Lissa was there, in a sense, as Ruth had had a long letter from her that morning which she had brought over to read to her father.  Ruth’s husband, a gentle, kindly, abstracted creature, was there too, pulling his long fingers through his beard and saying very little.  Ishmael liked him, but preferred him to come to the Manor rather than himself going to the Vicarage.  He had never got over the idea bred in him by association with the Parson that a priest should not be married.

Archelaus wandered on to the lawn looking his most spruce; he had evidently tried to tidy himself, having shaved and put on a clean collar of extraordinarily antiquated make.  His clothes might have had “American ready-made” written upon them.  He advanced towards them slowly, leaning heavily on his stick.

“Nicky,” said Ishmael, “this is your Uncle Archelaus....  This is my boy.”

Nicky got to his feet and said rather coldly that he hoped his uncle was well, but it was the old man whose eagerness in holding out his hand made Nicky’s advance seem laggard.  Nicky had taken a dislike to his uncle; he could not tell why.  He flattered himself he was not a snob, but he thought this old Rip Van Winkle a terrible thing to drop into any family out of the blue.  Archelaus lowered himself into a chair beside his nephew and began to try and make conversation.  There was something pathetic about his evident efforts and Nicky’s hidden distaste that was all there was to meet it, masked by courtesy.  Ishmael suddenly felt his heart soften towards his brother; he told himself almost with a pang that he need not have been afraid that this old prodigal would have beguiled Nicky as he did the children; his simple wiles were not for grown men busy with affairs.  Yet he still watched anxiously, though now the faint feeling of anxiety had rather transferred itself from Nicky to Archelaus.