His brother put a welcome end to the painful pause, for his wife did not utter a syllable in reply.  He pointed to the children.  They were still crowding, unconfused by all that oppressed their elders and which they did not notice or understand, about their new uncle; and he was glad of the opportunity to bend down to them and to have to answer a thousand questions.

“They’re a forward brood,” said their father.  He pointed to the children, but he looked furtively at his wife.  “For all that I’m surprised to see how soon you have become acquainted—­and intimate at once,” he added.  Perchance he continued his last remark in thought:  “it seems that you know how to become intimate quickly and to make others intimate with you!” A shade as of anxiety spread over his red face.  But his anxiety was not about the children; otherwise he would have looked at the children and not at his wife.

Apollonius was talking more and more eagerly to the children.  He had failed to hear the remark or he did not want to let the angry woman know whose face he carried so vividly within him.  He would have recognized the little ones, if they had met him by chance, as his brother’s children by their resemblance to their mother.  But the question how they had become so quickly intimate with him ought to have been put to old Valentine.  It was he who had been continually telling them about the uncle who was soon coming to see them—­perhaps only so as to be able to talk with some one about what he liked to talk of so much.  The brother and the sister-in-law avoided such conversations, and the father did not make himself familiar enough with the old fellow to talk with him about matters which might give him an excuse to drop into any kind of intimacy.  Old Valentine would also have been able to say that the children had not met their uncle just by chance.  They had come to find him.  Old Valentine had thought of how love that has waited long hurries to meet thousands of homecomers; it had hurt him to think that his favorite alone should fail to find any greeting before he knocked at his father’s door.

Apollonius suddenly ceased speaking.  He was shocked to think that his embarrassment had caused him to forget his father.  His brother understood his start and said with relief:  “He’s in the little garden.”  Apollonius jumped up and hurried out.

There, among his beds, crouched the figure of the old gentleman.  He was still following old Valentine’s shears with his critical hands as the servant slipped along on his knees before him.  He found many an inequality which the fellow had to remove at once.  It was no wonder.  Twice every minute old Valentine thought:  “Now he’s coming!” And when he thought thus the shears cut crookedly right into the bog.  And the old gentleman would have growled in quite another manner if the same thought had not made uncertain the hand that was now his eye.