OUGHT, perhaps, in the first place, to explain that I am, or rather was, a librarian at the suburban library of Chadstow Heath. When I first received this important appointment my salary was eighty pounds a year, but after six years' assiduous application to my duties it was advanced to one hundred and twenty pounds a year. I am married and have two children, and we lived in Gentian Villa, which is convenient to the library and barely ten minutes' walk from the heath itself. This may not represent to you a condition of material prosperity, but I would venture to point out that all these matters are entirely comparative. To a successful sugar broker or a popular comedian I must appear in the light of a pauper. To my own family I have always appeared to be something of a plutocrat. For you must know that I owe my education and whatever advancement I may have made to my own efforts at a national school, and the privileges of continuation classes. My father was a small greengrocer, and his family, which was a very large one and peculiarly prolific, has in no instance except my own risen above the social standard that he set for us. I hope this statement of mine will not sound priggish. It is simply a very bald assertion of truth. All my relatives are dear good people; it is simply that they do not, and never have, taken any interest in what is called education. My brother Albert is a greengrocer, as our father was, and he has seven children. Richard is in a leather-seller's shop. He earns more money than I did, but he has eleven children. Christopher is a packer at the Chadstow Heath Emporium. God has blessed him with three small offspring. Will is unmarried, and I could n't tell you quite what he does. He is something of a black sheep. My sister Nancy is married—alas! unhappily—to a worthless traveler in cheap jewelry. She has two children. Laura is the wife of an elderly Baptist who keeps a tobacco kiosk on Meadway. She is childless. Louie, my favorite sister, is not married, but she has a child. But her tragedy does not concern this story.
In fact, the details of the entities neither of myself nor of my brothers and sisters are of very great importance in what I want to tell you, beyond the fact that they will give you a clue to the amazing flutter among us that accompanied the appearance of our Uncle Herbert when he arrived from Africa. The truth is that I believe that every one of us had entirely forgotten all about him. Albert and I had a vague recollection of having heard our father refer to a delicate young brother who bolted to South Africa when he was a young man, and had not been heard of since.
But, lo and behold! he turned up one evening suddenly at Gentian Villa when my sister Louie and her child were paying us a visit. At first I thought he was some impostor, and I was almost on the point of warning my wife to keep an eye on the silver butter-dish and the fish-knives which we always displayed with a certain amount of pride on our dining-room sideboard.
He was a little, wizened old man with a bald head and small beady eyes. He had a way of sucking in his lips and continually nodding his head. He was somewhat shabbily dressed except for a heavy gold watch and chain. He appeared to be intensely anxious to be friendly with us all. He got the names and addresses of the whole family from me, and stated that he was going to settle down and live somewhere in London.
When one had got over his nervy, fussy way of behaving, there was something about the little man that was rather lovable. He stayed a couple of hours and promised to call again the next day. We laughed about him after he had gone, and, as relatives will, discussed his possible financial position. We little dreamed of the surprising difference Uncle Herbert was going to make to us all.
He called on all the family in rotation, and wherever he went he took little presents and made himself extremely affable and friendly. He told us that he had bought a house and was having it "done up a bit." And then, to our surprise, we discovered that he had bought "Silversands," which, as you know, is one of the largest houses on Chadstow Heath. It is, as Albert remarked, "more like a palace," a vast red-brick structure standing in its own grounds, which are surrounded by a high wall.