Great Uncle Hoot-Toot

"Geoff! I'm sure it can't be so bad. You've not had it a year."

"A year. No one wears a mackintosh for a year. The buttons are all off, and the button-holes are burst."

"I'm sure they can be mended. Martha would have done it if you'd asked her," said Vic, resolving to see to the unhappy mackintosh herself. "I know poor mamma doesn't want to spend any extra money just now."

"There's a great deal too much spent on Elsa and Frances, and all their furbelows," said Geoff, in what he thought a very manly tone. "Here, Vicky, help me to pull off my boots, and then I must climb up to the top of the house to change my things."

Vicky knelt down obediently and tugged at the muddy boots, though it was a task she disliked as much as she could dislike anything. She was rewarded by a gruff "Thank you," and when Geoff came down again in dry clothes, to find the table neatly prepared, and his little sister ready to pour out his tea, he did condescend to say that she was a good child! But even though his toast was hot and crisp, and his egg boiled to perfection, Geoff's pleasanter mood did not last long. He had a good many lessons to do that evening, and they were lessons he disliked. Vicky sat patiently, doing her best to help him till her bedtime came, and he had barely finished when Frances brought a message that he was to come upstairs – mamma said he was not to work any longer.

"You have finished, surely, Geoff?" she said, when he entered the drawing-room.

"If I had finished, I would have come up sooner. You don't suppose I stay down there grinding away to please myself, do you?" replied the boy, rudely.

"Geoff!" exclaimed his sisters, unwisely, perhaps.

He turned upon them.

"I've not come to have you preaching at me. Mamma, will you speak to them?" he burst out. "I hate this life – nothing but fault-finding as soon as I show my face. I wish I were out of it, I do! I'd rather be the poorest ploughboy in the country than lead this miserable life in this hateful London."

He said the last words loudly, almost shouting them, indeed. To do him justice, it was not often his temper got so completely the better of him. The noise he was making had prevented him and the others from hearing the bell ring – prevented them, too, from hearing, a moment or two later, a short colloquy on the stairs between Harvey and a new-comer.

"Thank you," said the latter; "I don't want you to announce me. I'll do it myself."

Geoff had left the door open.

"Yes," he was just repeating, even more loudly than before, "I hate this life, I do. I am grinding at lessons from morning to night, and when I come home this is the way you treat me. I – "

But a voice behind him made him start.

"Hoot-toot, young man," it said. "Hoot-toot, hoot-toot! Come, I say, this sort of thing will never do. And ladies present! Hoot – "

But the "toot" was drowned in a scream from Mrs. Tudor.

"Uncle, dear uncle, is it you? Can it be you yourself? Oh, Geoff, Geoff! he is not often such a foolish boy, uncle, believe me. Oh, how – how thankful I am you have come!"

She had risen from her seat and rushed forward to greet the stranger, but suddenly she grew strangely pale, and seemed on the point of falling. Elsa flew towards her on the one side, and the old gentleman on the other.

"Poor dear!" he exclaimed. "I have startled her, I'm afraid. Hoot-toot, hoot-toot, silly old man that I am. Where's that ill-tempered fellow off to?" he went on, glancing round. "Can't he fetch a glass of water, or make himself useful in some way?"

"I will," said Frances, darting forward. Geoffrey had disappeared, and small wonder.

"I am quite right now, thank you," said Mrs. Tudor, trying to smile, when Elsa had got her on to the sofa. "Don't be frightened, Elsa dear. Nor you, uncle; it was just the – the start. I've had a good deal to make me anxious lately, you know."

"I should think I did – those idiots of lawyers!" muttered the old man.

"And poor Geoff," she went on; "I am afraid I have not paid much attention to him lately, and he's felt it – foolishly, perhaps."

"Rubbish!" said Uncle Hoot-Toot under his breath. "Strikes me he's used to a good deal too much attention," he added as an aside to Elsa, with a quick look of inquiry in his bright keen eyes.

Elsa could hardly help smiling, but for her mother's sake she restrained herself.

"It will be all right now you have come home, dear uncle," Mrs. Tudor went on gently. "How was it? Had you started before you got my letters? Why did you not let us know?"

"I was on the point of writing to announce my departure," said the old gentleman, "when your letter came. It struck me then that I could get home nearly as quickly as a letter, and so I thought it was no use writing."

"Then you know – you know all about this bad news?" said Mrs. Tudor falteringly.

"Yes; those fellows wrote to me. That was right enough; but what they meant by worrying you about it, my dear, I can't conceive. It was quite against all my orders. What did poor Frank make me your trustee for, if it wasn't to manage these things for you?"

"Then you think, you hope, there may be something left to manage, do you?" asked Mrs. Tudor, eagerly. "I have been anticipating the very worst. I did not quite like to put it in words to these poor children" – and she looked up affectionately at the two girls; "but I have really been trying to make up my mind to our being quite ruined."

"Hoot-toot, hoot-toot!" said her uncle. "No such nonsense, my dear. I shall go to Norris's to-morrow morning and have it out with him. Ruined! No, no. It'll be all right, you'll see. We'll go into it all, and you have nothing to do but leave things to me. Now let us talk of pleasanter matters. What a nice, pretty little house you've got! And what nice, pretty little daughters! Good girls, too, or I'm uncommonly mistaken. They're comforts to you, Alice, my dear, eh?"

"The greatest possible comforts," answered the mother, warmly. "And so is little Vic. You haven't seen her yet."

"Little Vic? Oh, to be sure – my namesake." For Great-Uncle Hoot-Toot's real name, you must know, was Mr. Victor Byrne. "To be sure; must see her to-morrow; Vic, to be sure."

"And Geoffrey," Mrs. Tudor went on less assuredly. "Geoff is doing very well at school. You will have a good report of him from his masters. He is a steady worker, and – "

"But how about the home report of him, eh?" said Mr. Byrne, drily. "There's two sides to most things, and I've rather a weakness for seeing both. Never mind about that just now. I never take up impressions hastily. Don't be afraid. I'll see Master Geoff for myself. Let's talk of other things. What do these young ladies busy themselves about? Are they good housekeepers, eh?"

Mrs. Tudor smiled.

"Can you make a pudding and a shirt, Elsa and Frances?" she asked. "Tell your uncle your capabilities."

"I could manage the pudding," said Elsa. "I think the days for home-made shirts are over."

"Hoot-toot, toot-toot!" said Mr. Byrne; "new-fangled notions, eh?"

"No, indeed, Great-Uncle Hoot – " began Frances, eagerly. Then blushing furiously, she stopped short.

The old gentleman burst out laughing.

"Never mind, my dear; I'm used to it. It's what they always called me – all my nephews and nieces."

"Have you a great many nephews and nieces besides us?" asked Elsa.

Mr. Byrne laughed again.

"That depends upon myself," he said. "I make them, you see. I have had any quantity in my day, but they're scattered far and wide. And – there are a great many blanks, Alice, my dear, since I was last at home," he added, turning to Mrs. Tudor. "I don't know that any of them was ever quite such a pet of mine as this little mother of yours, my dears."

"Oh!" said Elsa, looking rather disappointed; "you are not our real uncle, then? I always thought you were."

"Well, think so still," said Mr. Byrne. "At any rate, you must treat me so, and then I shall be quite content. But I must be going. I shall see you to-morrow after I've had it out with that donkey Norris. What a stupid idiot he is, to be sure!" and for a moment Great-Uncle Hoot-Toot looked quite fierce. "And then I must see little Vic. What time shall I come to-morrow, Alice?"

"Whenever you like, uncle," she said. "Will you not come and stay here altogether?"

"No, thank you, my dear. I've got my own ways, you see. I'm a fussy old fellow. And I've got my servant – my blackamoor. He'd frighten all the neighbours. And you'd fuss yourself, thinking I wasn't comfortable. I'll come up to-morrow afternoon and stay on to dinner, if you like. And just leave the boy to me a bit. Good night, all of you; good night."