Looking through the window I saw, if I saw anything, a palanquin at our door, and attendant on it four dusky, half-naked bearers, who did not seem to fancy the splendor of the night, for they jumped about on the snow crust, and I could see them shiver and shake in the keen air.  Oho! thought! this, then, is my uncle from India!

“Yes, it is,” now spoke my visitor extraordinary, in a gruff, harsh voice.

“I think I have heard Polly speak of you,” I rejoined, in an attempt to be civil, for I did n’t like his face any better than I did his voice,—­a red, fiery, irascible kind of face.

“Yes I’ve come over to O Lord,—­quick, Jamsetzee, lift up that foot, —­take care.  There, Mr. Trimings, if that’s your name, get me a glass of brandy, stiff.”

I got him our little apothecary-labeled bottle and poured out enough to preserve a whole can of peaches.  My uncle took it down without a wink, as if it had been water, and seemed relieved.  It was a very pleasant uncle to have at our fireside on Christmas eve, I felt.

At a motion from my uncle, Jamsetzee handed me a parcel which I saw was directed to Polly, which I untied, and lo! the most wonderful camel’s-hair shawl that ever was, so fine that I immediately drew it through my finger-ring, and so large that I saw it would entirely cover our little room if I spread it out; a dingy red color, but splendid in appearance from the little white hieroglyphic worked in one corner, which is always worn outside, to show that it cost nobody knows how many thousands of dollars.

“A Christmas trifle for Polly.  I have come home—­as I was saying when that confounded twinge took me—­to settle down; and I intend to make Polly my heir, and live at my ease and enjoy life.  Move that leg a little, Jamsetzee.”

I meekly replied that I had no doubt Polly would be delighted to see her dear uncle, and as for inheriting, if it came to that, I did n’t know any one with a greater capacity for that than she.

“That depends,” said the gruff old smoker, “how I like ye.  A fortune, scraped up in forty years in Ingy, ain’t to be thrown away in a minute.  But what a house this is to live in!”; the uncomfortable old relative went on, throwing a contemptuous glance round the humble cottage.  “Is this all of it?”

“In the winter it is all of it,” I said, flushing up; “but in the summer, when the doors and windows are open, it is as large as anybody’s house.  And,” I went on, with some warmth, “it was large enough just before you came in, and pleasant enough.  And besides,” I said, rising into indignation, “you can not get anything much better in this city short of eight hundred dollars a year, payable first days of January, April, July, and October, in advance, and my salary....”

“Hang your salary, and confound your impudence and your seven-by-nine hovel!  Do you think you have anything to say about the use of my money, scraped up in forty years in Ingy?  Things have got to be changed!” he burst out, in a voice that rattled the glasses on the sideboard.