in which appeal I was to recognize presently my uncle's distinctive note.
My uncle's face appeared above a card of infants' comforters in the glass pane of the door. I perceived his eyes were brown, and that his glasses creased his nose. It was manifest he did not know us from Adam. A stare of scrutiny allowed an expression of commercial deference to appear in front of it, and my uncle flung open the door.
"You don't know me?" panted my mother.
My uncle would not own he did not, but his curiosity was manifest. My mother sat down on one of the little chairs before the soap and patent medicine-piled counter, and her lips opened and closed.
"A glass of water, madam," said my uncle, waved his hand in a sort of curve, and shot away.
My mother drank the water and spoke. "That boy," she said, "takes after his father. He grows more like him every day, . . . and so I have brought him to you."
"His father, madam?"
"George."
For a moment the chemist was still at a loss. He stood behind the counter with the glass my mother had returned to him in his hand. Then comprehension grew.
"By Gosh!" he said. "Lord!" he cried. His glasses fell off. He disappeared, replacing them, behind a pile of boxed-up bottles of blood mixture. "Eleven thousand virgins!" I heard him cry. The glass was banged down. "O-ri-ental Gums!"
He shot away out of the shop through some masked door. One heard his voice. "Susan! Susan!"
Then he reappeared with an extended hand. "Well,
