"'How the deuce should I know?' I asked with needless heat.
"'Oh!' said Wilkins and reflected. 'But——'
"He glanced at my troubled face and said no more.
"But at the game of 'Reginald Flake' he overhauled me and beat me at the end of the book, 67-42."
§ 11
"I concealed altogether from my mother the share that Fanny had had in getting me my new job and all the opportunities it carried with it in Thunderstone House, and so it was possible for her to find some pride and satisfaction in my increasing prosperity. I was presently able to double and then still further to increase my contribution to the household expenses, and I exchanged my attic, which was handed over to Prue for her very own, for the room which had once sheltered the old Moggeridges. It was rearranged as a bed-sitting room for me, and soon I had first one and then several shelves full of books and a writing-desk of my own.
"And also I concealed from my mother, for there was no use in distressing her, the frequency of my visits to Fanny. We began to make little excursions together, for Fanny, I discovered, was often very lonely. Newberry was a very busy man, and often he could not come near her for ten days or a fortnight, and although she had some women friends, and classes and lectures, there were gaps often of several days when she would have had no one to speak to but the servant who came in daily to her, if it had not been for me. But all this companioning of Fanny I tried to hide from my mother, though now and then her suspicions stabbed my falsehoods. Ernie and Prue, however, were able to follow the calls of love unhampered by the family shame, and presently they were both engaged and his young lady and her young man were brought to a Sunday tea-party in the drawing-room—through the kind permission of Mr. and Mrs. Milton who were, as usual, 'away.' Ernie's Young Lady—I've completely forgotten her name—proved to be a well-dressed, self-possessed young woman with a vast knowledge of people in what we used to call 'society'; she talked freely and fashionably, taking the larger share of the conversation, of Ascot and Monte Carlo and the Court. Prue's Mr. Pettigrew was of a more serious quality, and of the things he said I remember now only that he expressed a firm conviction that Messages from the Dead were Bound to Come in a few years' time. He was a chiropodist and very well thought of in chiropodological circles."
"Stop!" cried Radiant. "What is this? You are talking nonsense, Sarnac. What is chiropodological—hand—foot—scientific?"
"I thought you'd ask me that," said Sarnac, smiling. "Chiropody was—corn-cutting."
"Corn-cutting—harvesting," said Starlight. "But where do the hands and feet come in? There were machines then, were there not?"