what might
happen to them so long as Uncle Arthur knew nothing about it. Having
flung these kittens into the water to swim or drown, so long as he
didn't have to listen to their cries while they were doing it, Uncle
Arthur apparently cared nothing.

All Mr. Twist's chivalry, of which there was a great deal, rose up
within him at the thought of Uncle Arthur. He wanted to go and ask him
what he meant by such conduct, and earnestly inquire of him whether he
called himself a man; but as he knew he couldn't do this, being on a
ship heading for New York, he made up for it by taking as much care of
the ejected nieces as if he were an uncle himself,--but the right sort
of uncle, the sort you have in America, the sort that regards you as a
sacred and precious charge.

In his mind's eye Mr. Twist saw Uncle Arthur as a typical bullying,
red-necked Briton, with short side-whiskers. He pictured him under-sized
and heavy-footed, trudging home from golf through the soppy green fields
of England to his trembling household. He was quite disconcerted one day
to discover from something Anna-Rose said that he was a tall man, and
not fat at all, except in one place.

"Indeed," said Mr. Twist, hastily rearranging his mind's-eye view of
Uncle Arthur.

"He goes fat suddenly," said Anna-Felicitas, waking from one of her
dozes. "As though he had swallowed a bomb, and it had stuck when it got
to his waistcoat."

"If you can imagine it," added Anna-Rose politely, ready to explain and
describe further if required.

But Mr. Twist could imagine it. He readjusted his picture of Uncle
Arthur, and this time got him right,--the tall, not bad-looking man,
clean-shaven and with more hair a great deal than he, Mr. Twist, had. He
had thought of him as an old ruffian; he now perceived that he could be
hardly more than middle-aged and that Aunt Alice, a lady for whom he
felt an almost painful sympathy, had a lot more of Uncle Arthur to get
through before she was done.

"Yes," said Anna-Rose, accepting the word mid

John Holland Rose (1855-1942) was an influential English historian who wrote a famous biography of French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and also wrote a history of Europe, entitled The Development of the European Nations. Rose was the basis for C. P. Snows fictional character M. H. L. Gay (see Years of Hope: Cambridge, Colonial Administrator in the South Seas, and Cricket by Philip Snow.)

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