Pledge's heart was in the plate-closet at that moment, but his patience
was monumental.

"I don't know, my lord--unless it's because 'e's only just left off
being knife-boy--they get used to standing at the sink a-washing up, my
lord, and William's feet is large, so I dessay he turned 'is toes out in
order to get near and not splash."

This elucidation appeared plausible as well as interesting to
Kingsmead, and he felt that in learning something of the habits of the
genus knife-boy he had added to his stock of human information, which he
undoubtedly had.

Then at lunch there had been the little matter of Bicky's dressmaker's
bill. The mater had been her crossest, and Bicky her silentest, and the
bill, discussed in French, a disgusting and superfluous language, the
acquirement of which Kingsmead had used much skill in evading, lay on
the table. It lay there, forgotten, after the two ladies had left the
room, but Kingsmead was a gentleman. So, later he had sought out his
sister and coaxed her into telling him the hair-raising sum to which
amounted the "two or three frocks" she had had that summer.

He had also learned that Mr. Yelverton, the Carrons, the Newlyns, and
Théo Joyselle were coming that afternoon, and what the _real_ reason was
that had made the Frenshaws wire they could not come. It had not at all
surprised him to hear that the reason given in the wire was utterly
false, for, like other people, Kingsmead was bound by his horizon.

On the whole, his day had been a busy one, and the valuable acquisitions
of knowledge that I have mentioned, together with a few scraps of