Chapter 2

On the Friday he saw them all, as Mrs. Moreen had promised, for her
husband had come back and the girls and the other son were at home. Mr.
Moreen had a white moustache, a confiding manner and, in his buttonhole,
the ribbon of a foreign order--bestowed, as Pemberton eventually learned,
for services. For what services he never clearly ascertained: this was a
point--one of a large number--that Mr. Moreen's manner never confided.
What it emphatically did confide was that he was even more a man of the
world than you might first make out. Ulick, the firstborn, was in
visible training for the same profession--under the disadvantage as yet,
however, of a buttonhole but feebly floral and a moustache with no
pretensions to type. The girls had hair and figures and manners and
small fat feet, but had never been out alone. As for Mrs. Moreen
Pemberton saw on a nearer view that her elegance was intermittent and her
parts didn't always match. Her husband, as she had promised, met with
enthusiasm Pemberton's ideas in regard to a salary. The young man had
endeavoured to keep these stammerings modest, and Mr. Moreen made it no
secret that _he_ found them wanting in "style." He further mentioned
that he aspired to be intimate with his children, to be their best
friend, and that he was always looking out for them. That was what he
went off for, to London and other places--to look out; and this vigilance
was the theory of life, as well as the real occupation, of the whole
family. They all looked out, for they were very frank on the subject of
its being necessary. They desired it to be understood that they were
earnest people, and also that their fortune, though quite adequate for
earnest people, required the most careful administration. Mr. Moreen, as
the parent bird, sought sustenance for the nest. Ulick invoked support
mainly at the club, where Pemberton guessed that it was usually served on
green cloth. The girls used to do up their hair and their frocks
themselves, and our young man felt appealed to to be glad, in regard to
Morgan's education, that, though it must naturally be of the best, it
didn't cost too much. After a little he _was_ glad, forgetting at times
his own needs in the interest inspired by the child's character and
culture and the pleasure of making easy terms for him.

During the first weeks of their acquaintance Morgan had been as puzzling
as a page in an unknown language--altogether different from the obvious
little Anglo-Saxons who had misrepresented childhood to Pemberton. Indeed
the whole mystic volume in which the boy had been amateurishly bound
demanded some practice in translation. To-day, after a considerable
interval, there is something phantasmagoria, like a prismatic reflexion
or a serial