Gender Readings. Top Ten. Ренц Т.Г - 64 стр.

      I had heard the story of Uncle George Meadows a dozen times,
and it had amused me because it sounded like an old ballad: it was
quite moving to come across it in real life. For Uncle George Mead-
ows and Tom, his younger brother, had both courted Mrs. Meadows
when she was Emily Green, fifty years and more ago, and when she
married Torn, George had gone away to sea.
      They heard of him on the China coast. For twenty years now
and then he had sent them presents; then there was no more news of
him; when Tom Meadows died his widow wrote and told him, but
received no answer; and at last they came to the conclusion that he
must be dead. But two or three days ago to their astonishment they
had received a letter from the matron of the sailors’ home at
Portsmouth. It appeared that for the last ten years George Meadows,
cri ppled with rheumatism, had lived there, and now, feeling that he
had not much longer to live, wanted to see once more the house in
which he was born. Albert Meadows, his great-nephew, had gone
over to Portsmouth in the Ford to fetch him and he was to arrive that
afternoon.
      “Just fancy,” said Mrs. George, “he’s not been here for more
than fifty years. He’s never even seen my George, who’s fifty-one
next birthday.”
      “And what does Mrs. Meadows think of it?” I asked.
      “Well, you know what she is. She sits there and smiles to herself.
All she says, ‘He was a good-looking young fellow when he left, but
not so steady as his brother,’ That’s why she chose my George’s
father. ‘But he’s probably quietened down by now,’ she says.”
      Mrs George asked me to look in and see him. With the simplic-
ity of a country woman who had never been further from her home
than London, she thought that because we had both been in China we
must have something in common. Of course I accepted. I found the
whole family assembled when I arrived; they were sitting in the great
old kitchen, with its stone floor, Mrs Meadows in her usual chair by
the fire, very upright, and I was amused to see that she had put on
her best silk dress, while her son and his wife sat at the table with
their children. On the other side of the fireplace sat an old man,
bunched up in a chair. He was very thin and his skin hung on his
bones like an old suit much too large for him; his face was wrinkled
and yellow and he had lost nearly all his teeth.
      I shook hands with him.

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