"Your Uncle Rufus," my mother said, and she closed her lips very tightly as she walked on.
The parlor shades were up--an ominous sign, for the parlor would only be opened to a person of importance. Had the Professor visited us, the humbler sitting-room would have been quite good enough to receive him in, and it seemed a strange commentary on his harsh judgment that his brother should be ushered into the stately chamber where the very air grew old in dignified seclusion. Still more forcibly was this idea impressed on my mind when I stood at the door and saw my father sitting very erect, on a most uncomfortable chair, listening respectfully to the stranger's rapid words.
Rufus Blight spoke in a loud voice; he lolled in the big walnut rocker, with his arm stretched across the centre table, to the peril of my mother's precious Swiss chalet and the glass dome which protected it; on the family Bible his fingers were beating a tattoo as carelessly as they might have done on the counter of his general store. There was nothing in his appearance to suggest kin to the lean and cadaverous Professor. The Professor always seemed to move with effort, but his brother was alive all over. Though short and fat, he had none of the placidity which we associate with corpulence. As he talked his hands moved restlessly; his bristling red mustache accentuated the play of his lips; his heavy gold watch-chain moved up and down with his breathing; even his hair was alert.
"He is a remarkable man--I might say, a very remarkable man," were the words that came to us as we entered the hall. "Of course, you couldn't understand him--few could. He had to go his own way and would take help from no one, not even his brother. Upon my word, Judge----"
Our entrance checked him. He rose, and with arms akimbo stood gazing down at Penelope. She, clinging to my mother, her cheek pressed against her as she half turned from him, looked up at him, abashed and wondering, for to her small mind there was in this stranger something awe-inspiring. The sleek man in spotless, creaseless clothes, with polished boots and close-shaved, powdered, barbered face, was so different from her unkempt father that she could hardly believe him kin. Baal would have seemed as near to her, and had the idol stretched out his arms to take her into his destroying embrace, she could hardly have been more frightened than when she saw Mr. Blight's fat hands reaching toward her. Mr. Blight smiled, and well he might, for this slip of a girl gazing up at him was of his own blood, and all that was good in that blood found expression in her sweetness. He had come prepared to see a slattern, ill-fed, unkempt, the true daughter of shiftless parents and a wretched mountain home; he had found a graceful little body, and he wanted to take her into his possession at once.