A Labrador Doctor | Page 6

which to be lonely, but on one occasion it occurred to us that the
company of some friends would add to our enjoyment. Why we waited
till my father and mother departed I do not know, but I recall that
immediately they had gone we spent a much-valued sixpence in
telegraphing to a cousin in London to come down to us for the holidays.
Our message read: "Dear Sid. Come down and stay the holidays. Father
has gone to Aix." We were somewhat chagrined to receive the
following day an answer, also by wire: "Not gone yet. Father." It
appeared that my father and mother had stayed the night in London in
the very house to which we had wired, and Sid. having to ask his
father's permission in order to get his railway fare, our uncle had shown

the invitation to my father. It was characteristic of my parents that Sid.
came duly along, but they could not keep from sharing the joke with
my uncle.
During term-time some of our grown-up relatives would occasionally
visit us. But alas, it was only their idiosyncrasies which used to make
any impression upon us. One, a great-uncle, and a very distinguished
person, being Professor of Political Economy at Oxford, and a great
friend of the famous Dr. Jowett, the chancellor, was the only man we
knew who ever, at any time, stood up long to my father in argument. It
was only on rare occasions that we ever witnessed such a contest, but I
shall never forget one which took place in the evening in our
drawing-room. My great-uncle was a small man, rather stout and pink,
and almost bald-headed. He got so absorbed in his arguments, which he
always delivered walking up and down, that on this occasion, coming
to an old-fashioned sofa, he stepped right up onto the seat, climbed
over the back, and went on all the time with his remarks, as if only
punctuating them thereby.
Whether some of our pranks were suggested by those of which we
heard, I do not remember. One of my father's yarns, however, always
stuck in my memory. For once, being in a very good humour, he told us
how when some distinguished old lady had come to call on his father--a
house master with Arnold at Rugby--he had been especially warned not
to interrupt this important person, who had come to see about her son's
entering my grandfather's "House." It so happened that quite
unconsciously the lady in question had seated herself on an old
cane-bottomed armchair in which father had been playing, thus
depriving him temporarily of a toy with which he desired to amuse
himself. He never, even in later life, was noted for undue patience, and
after endeavouring in vain to await her departure, he somehow secured
a long pin. With this he crawled from behind under the seat, and by
discreetly probing upwards, succeeded suddenly in dislodging his
enemy.
Our devotions on Sunday were carried out in the parish church of the
village of Neston, there being no place of worship of the Established

Church in our little village. In term-time we were obliged to go
morning and evening to the long services, which never made any
concessions to youthful capacities. So in holiday-time, though it was
essential that we should go in the morning to represent the house, we
were permitted to stay home in the evening. But even the mornings
were a time of great weariness, and oft-recurrent sermons on the
terrible fate which awaited those who never went to church, and the
still more untoward end which was in store for frequenters of
dissenting meeting-houses, failed to awaken in us the respect due to the
occasion.
On the way to church we had generally to pass by those who dared
even the awful fate of the latter. It was our idea that to tantalize us they
wore especially gorgeous apparel while we had to wear black Etons and
a top hat--which, by the way, greatly annoyed us. One waistcoat
especially excited our animosity, and from it we conceived the title
"specklebelly," by which we ever afterwards designated the whole
"genus nonconformist." The entrance to the chapel (ours was the
Church!) was through a door in a high wall, over which we could not
see; and my youthful brain used to conjure up unrighteous and strange
orgies which we felt must take place in those precincts which we were
never permitted to enter. Our Sunday Scripture lessons had grounded
us very familiarly with the perverse habits of that section of the Chosen
People who would serve Baal and Moloch, when it obviously paid so
much better not to do so. But although we counted the numbers which
we saw going in, and sometimes met them coming