Page:The Inheritors, An Extravagant Story.djvu/276

 Kenny was my uncle, the head of the family, the husband of my aunt.

"They weren't on terms," I said.

"Oh, I know, I know," the old man mumbled, "but still, for one's only brother . . . However, you contrive to do yourselves pretty well. You're making your pile, aren't you? Someone said to me the other day—can't remember who it was—that you were quite one of the rising men—quite one of the men."

"Very kind of someone," I said.

"And now I see," he went on, lifting up a copy of a morning paper, over which I had found him munching his salmon cutlet, "now I see your sister is going to marry a cabinet minister. Ah!" he shook his poor, muddled, baked head, "I remember you both as tiny little dots."

"Why," I said, "she can hardly have been born then."

"Oh, yes," he affirmed, "that was when I came over in '78. She remembered, too, that I brought her over an ivory doll—she remembered."

"You have seen her?" I asked.

"Oh, I called two or three weeks—no, months