"Precisely."

"How much are you--am I--paying the lady for her services?" Dick
questioned in the disconcerting, tangential way that was already
habitual to him, as his school companions and teachers had learned to
their cost.

Mr. Crockett for the first time cleared his throat for pause.

"I'm paying her, ain't I?" Dick prodded. "Out of the twenty million,
you know."

"The spit of his father," said Mr. Slocum in an aside.

"Mrs. Summerstone, the lady as you elect to call her, receives one
hundred and fifty a month, eighteen hundred a year in round sum," said
Mr. Crockett.

"It's a waste of perfectly good money," Dick sighed. "And board and
lodging thrown in!"

He stood up--not the born aristocrat of the generations, but the
reared aristocrat of thirteen years in the Nob Hill palace. He stood
up with such a manner that his Board of Guardians left their leather
chairs to stand up with him. But he stood up as no Lord Fauntleroy
ever stood up; for he was a mixer. He had knowledge that human life
was many-faced and many-placed. Not for nothing had he been spelled
down by Mona Sanguinetti. Not for nothing had he fought Tim Hagan to a
standstill and, co-equal, ruled the schoolyard roost with him.