"I don't know. They may have heard of you at your uncle's."
"My father because you have no money, and my mother because you have no grace."
"No grace, Tom? Am I so very clumsy?"
Thomas burst out laughing.
"I forgot," he said. "You were not brought up to my mother's slang. She and her set use Bible words till they make you hate them."
"But you shouldn't hate them. They are good in themselves, though they be wrong used."
"That's all very well. Only if you had been tried with them as I have been, I am afraid you would have had to give in to hating them, as well as me, Lucy. I never did like that kind of slang. But what am I to do with old Boxall—I beg your pardon—with your uncle Richard? He'll be sure to write to my father before he sails. They're friends, you know."
"Well, but you will be beforehand with him, and then it won't matter. You were going to do it at any rate, and the thing now is to have the start of him," said Lucy, perhaps not sorry to have in the occurrence an additional spur to prick the sides of Thomas's intent.
"Yes, yes; that's all very well," returned Thomas, dubiously, as if there was a whole world behind it.