"Of course it do. There's changes there, if you like."
"I suppose you sometimes see . . . the young people?"
"See them? I should just think we do, and hear them and hear about them from morning to night. There never was more mixable children than the young Ffolliots."
"How many are there?" Eloquent tried to keep his voice cool and uninterested, but he felt as he used to feel when he was a child in "hiding games," when some one told him he was "getting warm."
"Well, there's Mr Grantly, he's the eldest; he's going to be an officer in the army like his grandpa; he's gone apprentice to some shop."
"What?" asked Eloquent, in astonishment.
"I thought it a bit queer myself, but Miss Mary herself did say it. 'Grantly's gone to the shop,' she said, 'to learn to be a soldier'; and I said, 'Well, the gentry's got more sense than I thought for, if they gives 'em a trade as well.' And Miss Mary she said again, he'd gone to a shop right enough, and went off laughing."
"But that's impossible," said Eloquent. "He must have gone either to
Sandhurst or Woolwich; there's nowhere else he could go."
"She never mentioned neither of those names. 'Shop,' she said . . . you needn't look at me like that, Eloquent . . . I'm positive."
"You were telling me how many children there were," Eloquent remarked pacifically, "Grantly, the eldest son, and then . . . ?"