“Oh, dear,” said the old gentleman, almost in tears. “What a day! And it opened so propitiously. I watched a perfect example of a scavenger beetle at work for nearly half an hour and then—this.”
William was watching them with a perfectly expressionless face.
“Never mind,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what happens to-day. It’s extra.”
“We must keep the boy,” said Augustus, “till we have made inquiries.”
“Then he must be washed,” said Sophia firmly, “and those dreadful clothes must be fumigated.”
William submitted to the humiliating process of being washed by a buxom servant. He noticed, with misgiving, that his birthmark disappeared in the process. He resisted all attempts on the part of the maid-servant at intimate conversation.
“A deaf moot, that’s wot I calls ’im,” said the maid indignantly, “an’ me wastin’ my kindness on ’im an’ takin’ a hinterest in ’im an’ ’im treatin’ me with scornful silence like. A deaf moot ’e is.”
The lady called Sophia had entered, carrying a short, white, beflounced garment.
“This is the only thing I can find about your size, boy,” she said. “It’s a fancy dress I had made for a niece of mine about your size. Although it has a flimsy appearance, the thing is made on a warm wool lining. My niece was subject to bronchitis. You will not find it cold. You can just wear it while you have dinner, while your clothes are being—er—heated.”
A delicious smell was emanating from a saucepan on the fire. William decided to endure anything rather than risk being ejected before that smell materialised.