Paternal relatives Godwin had as good as none.  In quitting London, Nicholas Peak had ceased to hold communication with any of his own stock save the younger brother Andrew.  With him he occasionally exchanged a letter, but Andrew’s share in the correspondence was limited to ungrammatical and often unintelligible hints of numerous projects for money-making.  Just after the removal of the bereaved family to Twybridge, they were surprised by a visit from Andrew, in answer to one of whose letters Mrs. Peak had sent news of her husband’s death.  Though her dislike of the man amounted to loathing, the widow could not refuse him hospitality; she did her best, however, to prevent his coming in contact with anyone she knew.  Andrew declared that he was at length prospering; he had started a coffee-shop at Dalston, in north-east London, and positively urged a proposal (well-meant, beyond doubt) that Godwin should be allowed to come to him and learn the business.  Since then the Londoner had once again visited Twybridge, towards the end of Godwin’s last school-year.  This time he spoke of himself less hopefully, and declared a wish to transfer his business to some provincial town, where he thought his metropolitan experience might be of great value, in the absence of serious competition.  It was not difficult to discover a family likeness between Andrew’s instability and the idealism which had proved the ruin of Nicholas.

On this second occasion Godwin tried to escape a meeting with his uncle.  Unable to do so, he sat mute, replying to questions monosyllabically.  Mrs. Peak’s shame and annoyance, in face of this London-branded vulgarian, were but feeble emotions compared with those of her son.  Godwin hated the man, and was in dread lest any school-fellow should come to know of such a connection.  Yet delicacy prevented his uttering a word on the subject to his mother.  Mrs Peak’s silence after Andrew’s departure made it uncertain how she regarded the obligation of kindred, and in any such matter as this the boy was far too sensitive to risk giving pain.  But to his brother Oliver he spoke.

’What is the brute to us?  When I’m a man, let him venture to come near me, and see what sort of a reception he’ll get!  I hate low, uneducated people!  I hate them worse than the filthiest vermin!—­ don’t you?’

Oliver, aged but thirteen, assented, as he habitually did to any question which seemed to await an affirmative.

‘They ought to be swept off the face of the earth!’ pursued Godwin, sitting up in bed—­for the dialogue took place about eleven o’clock at night.  ’All the grown-up creatures, who can’t speak proper English and don’t know how to behave themselves, I’d transport them to the Falkland Islands,’—­this geographic precision was a note of the boy’s mind,—­’and let them die off as soon as possible.  The children should be sent to school and purified, if possible; if not, they too should be got rid of.’