CHAPTER V--THE UNCLE.
Besides the old lady, there was another relative of the family, whose visits were a great annoyance to me--this was 'Uncle Robson,' Mrs.
Bloomfield's brother; a tall, self-sufficient fellow, with dark hair and sallow complexion like his sister, a nose that seemed to disdain the earth, and little grey eyes, frequently half-closed, with a mixture of real stupidity and affected contempt of all surrounding objects.

He was a thick-set, strongly-built man, but he had found some means of compressing his waist into a remarkably small compass; and that, together with the unnatural stillness of his form, showed that the lofty-minded, manly Mr.Robson, the scorner of the female sex, was not above the foppery of stays.

He seldom deigned to notice me; and, when he did, it was with a certain supercilious insolence of tone and manner that convinced me he was no gentleman: though it was intended to have a contrary effect.

But it was not for that I disliked his coming, so much as for the harm he did the children--encouraging all their evil propensities, and undoing in a few minutes the little good it had taken me months of labour to achieve.
Fanny and little Harriet he seldom condescended to notice; but Mary Ann was something of a favourite.

He was continually encouraging her tendency to affectation (which I had done my utmost to crush), talking about her pretty face, and filling her head with all manner of conceited notions concerning her personal appearance (which I had instructed her to regard as dust in the balance compared with the cultivation of her mind and manners); and I never saw a child so susceptible of flattery as she was.