"What do you call a sergeant in a line regiment, then?"
"Oh! of course, but among gentlemen—I mean—among the set with whom I was brought up, to be in the army means to have a commission."
"Yes: that was my pardonable deception. I thought that you would respect yourself more if you felt that your father, like the fathers of your friends, belonged to the upper class. Now, my dear boy, you will respect yourself just as much, although you know that he was but a sergeant, and a brave fellow who fell at my side in the Indian Mutiny."
"And my mother?"
"I did not know her; she was dead before I found you out, and took you from your Uncle Bunker."
"Uncle Bunker!" Harry laughed, with a little bitterness. "Uncle Bunker! Fancy asking one's Uncle Bunker to dine at the club! What is he by trade?"
"He is something near a big brewery, a brewery boom, as the Americans say. What he actually is, I do not quite know. He lives, if I remember rightly, at a place an immense distance from here, called Stepney."
"Do you know anything more about my father's family?"
"No! The sergeant was a tall, handsome, well set-up man; but I know nothing about his connections. His name, if that is any help to you, was, was—in fact"—here Lord Jocelyn assumed an air of ingratiating sweetness—"was—Goslett—Goslett; not a bad name, I think, pronounced with perhaps a leaning to an accent on the last syllable. Don't you agree with me, Harry?"