"Sir."

"Well, chapel, then. You go to chapel, no doubt?"

Robert stared blankly.

"You don't? But surely your mother takes you----"

"I haven't got a mother." His voice sounded in his own ears like a
shout. He scowled down at the faces nearest him. He was ready to
fight them now. If they were going to say anything about his mother,
good or bad, he would fly at them, just as he had flown at his old
aggressors in the Terrace, regardless of size and numbers.

"Your father, then?"

"I haven't got a father."

His questioner smiled faintly, not without asperity.

"Come, come, you are not yet a gentleman in independent circumstances.
Who takes care of you?"

"Christine."

"And who, pray, is Christine?"

Who was Christine? It was as though suddenly the corner of a curtain
had been raised for a moment, letting him look through into a strange
new country.