"Good morning, Albert," he said.
"Morning, sir."
"Where are the other lads?"
"Where they ought to be, sir. In the Lads' Barn, waiting for Miss Boy."
"And why aren't you there?" asked the young man, amused.
Albert, in fact, spent all his spare time of late shaving. Indeed, he was in the habit of informing those he called his colleagues that unless he shaved three times a day he wasn't 'ardly decent.
"I got to keep at it, sir," he confided now to Mr. Silver. "Else I gets it from Miss Boy."
"What d'you get from her?" asked the young man blandly. "A razor?"
Old Cherry chuckled.
"'E larders his chin and then scrapes the soap off," he said. "That amooses Albert, that does."