`` I potter about this garden considerable , '' he said . `` It pleases the women folks to have lots of posies . '' I laughed , for Uncle Dick was a bachelor and considered to be a hopeless one . `` Do n't laugh , Master , '' he said , pressing my arm . `` I 've no woman folk of my own about me now , 't is true . But all the girls in the district come to Uncle Dick when they want flowers for their little diversions . Besides -- perhaps -- sometimes -- '' Uncle Dick broke off and stood in a brown study , looking at an old stump aflame with nasturtiums for fully three minutes . Later on I was to learn the significance of that pause and reverie . I spent the whole evening with Uncle Dick . After we had explored the garden he took me into his house and into his `` den . '' The house was a small white one and wonderfully neat inside , considering the fact that Uncle Dick was his own housekeeper . His `` den '' was a comfortable place , its one window so shadowed by a huge poplar that the room had a grotto-like effect of emerald gloom . I came to know it well , for , at Uncle Dick 's invitation , I did my studying there and browsed at will among his classics . We soon became close friends . Uncle Dick had always `` chummed with the masters , '' as he said , but our friendship went deeper . For my own part , I preferred his company to that of any young man I knew . There was a perennial spring of youth in Uncle Dick 's soul that yet had all the fascinating flavour of ripe experience . He was clever , kindly , humorous and , withal , so crystal clear of mind and heart that an atmosphere partaking of childhood hung around him . I knew Uncle Dick 's outward history as the Bayside people knew it . It was not a very eventful one .
He had lost his father in boyhood ; before that there had been some idea of Dick 's going XXXXX college .
After Besides as at by for inside into on to