"Yours, I should say. Dad's are square in the toes."
Next moment a large and sinewy hand gripped her by the wrist, and the boot was taken from her.
"Understand," said Apollyon, looking very like Apollyon indeed, "this must never occur again. I am angry with you."
He spoke quite quietly, but there was a vibrant note in his voice which Daphne had never heard before. Mr Tom Winch and Mr Montague would have recognised it. She looked up at him fearlessly, rather interested than otherwise in this new side of his character.
"I can't quite grasp why you should be angry," she said, "though I can see you are. Not being millionaires, we all clean our own boots—excepting Dad, of course. I always do his. You being a visitor, I threw yours in as a make-weight. It's all in the day's work."
But Juggernaut's fit had passed.
"I beg your pardon," he said. "I have no right to be angry with any one but myself. I am ashamed. I should have thought about this sooner, but I accepted your assurance that my visit would throw no extra burden upon the household rather too readily. Now, for the rest of the time I am here I propose, with your permission, to black my own boots. And as a sort of compensation for the trouble I have caused, I am going to black my hostess's as well."
"Do you know how to?" inquired the hostess, rather apprehensively.
For answer Juggernaut picked up a laced shoe from off the bench and set to work upon it.
"I once blacked my own boots every day for two years," he said, breathing heavily upon the shoe. "Now, if you want to go in and superintend the preparation of breakfast, you may leave me here, and I will undertake to produce the requisite standard of brilliancy." His face lit up with one of his rare and illuminating smiles, and he set grimly to work again.