About a quarter of an
hour would have to elapse before it would be time to say his
good-byes and make his way across the village green to the
station, with a selected escort of nephews and nieces. He
was a good-natured, kindly dispositioned man, and in theory
he was delighted to pay periodical visits to the wife and
children of his dead brother William; in practice, he
infinitely preferred the comfort and seclusion of his own
house and garden, and the companionship of his books and his
parrot to these rather meaningless and tiresome incursions
into a family circle with which he had little in common. It
was not so much the spur of his own conscience that drove
him to make the occasional short journey by rail to visit
his relatives, as an obedient concession to the more
insistent but vicarious conscience of his brother, Colonel
John, who was apt to accuse him of neglecting poor old
William's family. Groby usually forgot or ignored the
existence of his neighbour kinsfolk until such time as he
was threatened with a visit from the Colonel, when he would
put matters straight by a burned pilgrimage across the few
miles of intervening country to renew his acquaintance with
the young people and assume a kindly if rather forced
interest in the well-being of his sister-in-law.
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