Ranulph had certainly always been an odd and rather disagreeable boy, and there had been that horrid little incident at the Moongrass cheese supper-party ... but that he actually should have eaten fairy fruit!
"Do you mean? Do you mean...?" he gasped.
Endymion Leer nodded his head significantly: "One of the worst cases I have ever known."
"And Nathaniel knows?"
Again Endymion Leer nodded.
A wave of righteous indignation swept over Master Ambrose. The Honeysuckles were every bit as ancient and honourable a family as the Chanticleers, and yet here was he, ready to tarnish his escutcheon for ever, ready if need be to make the town crier trumpet his disgrace from the market-place, to sacrifice money, position, family pride, everything, for the good of the community. While the only thought of Nathaniel, and he the Mayor, was to keep his skeleton safely hidden in the cupboard.
"Master Ambrose," continued Endymion Leer, in a grave impressive voice, "if what you fear about your daughter be true, then it is Master Nathaniel who is to blame. No, no, hear me out," as Master Ambrose raised a protesting hand. "I happen to know that some months ago Mumchance warned him of the alarming increase there has been recently in Lud in the consumption of ... a certain commodity. And I know that this is true from my practice in the less genteel parts of the town. Take it from me, Master Ambrose, you Senators make a great mistake in ignoring what takes place in those low haunts. Nasty things have a way of not always staying at the bottom, you know—stir the pond and they rise to the top. Anyway, Master Nathaniel was warned, yet he took no steps."
He paused for a few seconds, and then, fixing his eyes searchingly on Master Ambrose, he said, "Did it never strike you that Master Nathaniel Chanticleer was a rather ... curious man?"
"Never," said Master Ambrose coldly. "What are you insinuating, Leer?"
Endymion Leer gave a little shrug: "Well, it is you who have set the example in insinuations. Master Nathaniel is a haunted man, and a bad conscience makes a very good ghost. If a man has once tasted fairy fruit he is never the same again. I have sometimes wondered if perhaps, long ago, when he was a young man...."