"Well, I do know your face—Why, yes, I've seen your face in the papers. I shall get it in a minute now—don't you tell me." She studied him with determination. Harry ate away in contented amusement. "Yes, you're the man who—why, yes, you're Tristram?"
"That's right. I'm Tristram."
"Well, to think of that! Meeting you! Well, I shall have something to tell the girls. Why, a friend of mine wrote down to the country, special, for your photo."
"That must have proved a disappointment, I'm afraid. The romance was better than the hero."
"You may say romance!" she conceded heartily. "To be a lord and——!" She leant forward. "I say, how do you get your living now?"
"Gone into the building-trade," he answered.
"You surprise me!" The observation was evidently meant to be extremely civil. "But there, it isn't so much what your job is as having some job. That's what I say."
"I wish I always said—and thought—things as sensible;" and he took courage to offer her another glass of lager. She accepted with a slight recrudescence of primness; but her eyes did not leave him now. "I never did!" he heard her murmur as she raised her glass. "Well, here's luck to you, sir! (He had been a lord even if he were now a builder). You did the straight thing in the end."
"What?" asked Harry, a little startled.
"Well, some did say as you'd known it all along. Oh, I don't say so; some did."