“Mr. Henry seems to be the sober one of the family,” Mr. Johnson remarked.
“He’s a character, he is,” Foulds declared. “A real, old-fashioned, Dickens character. You’re right about him being the sober one, though. He’d never spend a sixpence he could help, and I’d back his conscience against the Archbishop of Canterbury’s. Have a drink, Mr. Craske.”
“With pleasure, Tom.”
“Will you honour me, Mr. Johnson?”
“The honour is mine as the thirst certainly is,” was the prompt response. “Very kind of you, I am sure.”
The young man Fielding, having succeeded with his fly, entered diffidently into the conversation.
“Have the family a town house?” he enquired.
“Not now,” Mr. Craske replied. “There was one in Grosvenor Square, but that went ten years ago, the year Sir Bertram lost seventy thousand pounds on the Derby.”
“They spend most of their time down here then, I suppose?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” the grocer rejoined. “Mr. Gregory, soon after the war, disappeared altogether for a year or so, and he’s always taking long trips abroad. The Squire, he just goes up to those things that the gentry from everywhere seem to meet at—the Eton and Harrow, and Varsity Cricket Matches at Lord’s, and Ascot and Goodwood.”