"What the devil you see to admire in that long-legged, saucer-eyed, curly-headed mother's pet I don't know," Jimmy grumbled.
"I don't admire him," Sylvia said. "I don't admire anybody except Joan of Arc. But I like him."
Jimmy scowled; and later on that day Mr. Gustard warned Sylvia that her uncle (as such was Jimmy known in the lodgings) had carried on alarmingly about her friendship with young Artie.
"It's nothing to do with him," Sylvia affirmed, with out-thrust chin.
"Nothing whatever," Mr. Gustard agreed. "But if I was you I wouldn't throw young Artie in his face. I've never had a niece myself, but from what I can make out an uncle feels something like a father; and a father gets very worried about his rights."
"But you've never had any children, and so you can't know any more about the feelings of a father," Sylvia objected.
"Ah, but I've got my own father to look back upon," Mr. Gustard said. "He mostly took a spade to me, I remember, though he wasn't against jabbing me in the ribs with a trowel if there wasn't a spade handy. I reckon it was him as first put the notion of liberty for all into my head. I never set much store by uncles, though. The only uncle I ever had died of croup when he was two years old."
"My father didn't like his aunts," Sylvia added to the condemnation. "He was brought up by two aunts."
"Aunts in general is sour bodies, 'specially when they're in charge and get all the fuss of having children with none of the fun."
"Mr. Monkley isn't really my uncle," Sylvia abruptly proclaimed.
"Go on! you don't mean it?" said Mr. Gustard. "I suppose he's your guardian?"
"He's absolutely nothing," she insisted. "He used to live with my father, and when my father died he just went on living with me. If I don't want to live with him I needn't."
"But you must live with somebody," said Mr. Gustard. "There's a law about having visible means of support. You couldn't have a lot of kids living on their own."
"Why not?" Sylvia asked, in contemptuous amazement.
"Why not?" Mr. Gustard repeated. "Why because every one would get pestered to death. It's the same with stray dogs. Stray dogs have got to have a home. If they haven't a home of their own, they're taken to the Dogs' Home at Battersea and cremated, which is a painless and mercenary death."