Page:Zodiac stories by Blanche Mary Channing.pdf/112

Rh making a fuss if it did not happen to suit them; but it was evident that the porridge and milk were not what they were used to eating; and Mr. McAllister remarked in an abstract manner as they rose, leaving their portion half finished, that simple fare was the rule in his house, and nothing else was fit and wholesome for young folk.

The boys blushed and hung their heads at this hidden rebuke, which they felt they hardly deserved. They looked at their uncle with a sense of dread; he was not the man they had always thought of as their dear Uncle Robert, the loving brother their mother had told them about. This was a terribly exacting, grim kind of an Uncle Robert: they felt as if he had never been a boy himself. But he had taken them into the study, and seated himself at the table with the brown cloth, not asking them to sit, but letting them stand before the table as if it was a Bar of Justice, and he the judge.