These conditions never ceased to depress Jack.  Fresh from a life out of doors, accustomed to an old-fashioned dining-room—­the living room, really, of the family who had cared for him since his father’s death, where not only the sun made free with the open doors and windows, but the dogs and neighbors as well—­the sober formality of this early meal—­all of his uncle’s meals, for that matter—­sent shivers down his back that chilled him to the bone.

He had looked about him the first morning of his arrival, had noted the heavy carved sideboard laden with the garish silver; had examined the pictures lining the walls, separated from the dark background of leather by heavy gold frames; had touched with his fingers the dial of the solemn bronze clock, flanked by its equally solemn candelabra; had peered between the steel andirons, bright as carving knives, and into the freshly varnished, spacious chimney up which no dancing blaze had ever whirled in madcap glee since the mason’s trowel had left it and never would to the end of time,—­not as long as the steam heat held out; had watched the crane-like step of Parkins as he moved about the room—­cold, immaculate, impassive; had listened to his “Yes, sir—­thank you, 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.