Uncle Peter
followed me with perfect patience; nay, I believe, with a delight that
equalled my perplexity, for, every now and then when I looked round to
him with a silent appeal for sympathy in the distressing dilemma into
which he had thrown me, I found him rubbing his hands and spiritually
chuckling over his victim. Nor would he volunteer the least assistance
to save me from the dire consequences of too much liberty. How long I
was in making up my mind I cannot tell; but as I look back upon this
splendour of my childhood, I feel as if I must have wandered for weeks
through interminable forest-alleys of toy-bearing trees. As often as I
read the story of Aladdin--and I read it now and then still, for I have
children about, and their books about--the subterranean orchard of
jewels always brings back to my inward vision the inexhaustible riches
of the toy-shop to which Uncle Peter took me that Christmas-eve. As soon
as, in despair of choosing well, I had made a desperate plunge at
decision, my Uncle Peter, as if to forestall any supervention of
repentance, began buying like a maniac, giving me everything that took
his fancy or mine, till we and our toys nearly filled the cab which he
called to take us home.
"Uncle Peter was little round man, not _very_ fat, resembling both
in limbs and features an overgrown baby. And I believe the resemblance
was not merely an external one; for, though his intellect was quite up
to par, he retained a degree of simplicity of character and of tastes
that was not childlike only, but bordered, sometimes, upon the childish.
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