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  ‘Well, you can’t know less!’ said his lordship, in an undervoice charged with asperity.

  ‘Yes, but you said you would take me yourself, Cousin Alverstoke!’

  Hot with embarrassment, Jessamy besought his brother to stop plaguing his lordship to do what anyone but a gudgeon could see he didn’t want to do. This had the effect of causing Felix to direct a look of heartrending reproach at the Marquis, and to say, in the voice of one mortally wounded: ‘I thought you did want to, sir. You said –’

  ‘Yes, of course I do!’ interrupted his lordship hastily. ‘But it so happens that I was about to drive to Richmond, to try the paces of my new team. How would you like to go with me there, instead of to the foundry?’

  ‘Oh, no!’ protested Felix.

  This was too much for Jessamy. He exclaimed passionately: ‘You clodpole! You – you stupid little looby! Liefer visit a foundry than sit behind those bang-up grays we s-saw drive up to the house? You must have rats in your garret!’

  ‘I like machines better than horses,’ said Felix simply.

  In the interests of peace, the Marquis intervened yet again. ‘Well, there’s no disputing about taste. If your heart is set on the foundry, the foundry it shall be. Do you want to inspect the grays, Jessamy? Go and talk to my groom about them! You may tell him that I shan’t need them after all today.’

  ‘Oh! – Thank you, sir! I would like to take a look at them!’ Jessamy said, his scowl vanishing.

  With a passing admonition to Felix to keep Luff quiet, he hastened out of the room. By the time he returned, Felix was consuming a hearty meal of plum cake, washed down by copious draughts of lemonade; and eagerly (if sometimes a trifly thickly) holding forth on blast-pipes and safety valves. Mr Trevor, dredging from the depths of his memory such elementary knowledge of the principles governing steam-power as he had happened to acquire during the course of his career, was labouring manfully to keep pace with him; and the Marquis, lounging at his graceful ease in a wing-chair, was observing him with a smile of unholy amusement.

  With the entrance of Jessamy, the conversation took an abrupt turn. Adjuring Felix not to be a dead bore, he favoured the Marquis with his enthusiastic opinion of the grays. ‘Complete to a shade!’ he said. ‘Deep, broad chests, light necks, and their hocks perfectly straight! And the quarters so well let-down! I never saw such a well-matched team – and they go well together, too! Your man drove me round the Square behind them – he thought you would not object to it! – and I particularly liked their forward action! High-steppers may be all very well for barouches and landaulets, but for a phaeton, or a curricle, or even a mere gig, I prefer the forward action, don’t you, sir?’

  ‘I do,’ agreed Alverstoke. ‘Have some lemonade!’

  ‘Oh, thank you, sir!’ said Jessamy, taking the glass from Charles Trevor’s hand. ‘No, no cake – thank you!’

  ‘It’s a good one!’ said Felix, generously wishing his elder to share the treat.

  Ignoring this interpolation, Jessamy drank his lemonade, and said: ‘If you please, sir, what did you give those men – the park-keepers, and the cowman?’

  ‘Never mind that!’ replied Alverstoke. ‘I am going to Newmarket tomorrow, and shall be away for a sennight, but when I return to London I shall try out those grays: would you like to go with me?’

  The answer was plainly to be read in Jessamy’s sudden flush, and kindling eyes. He gasped: ‘Sir – !’ but, an instant later, his countenance hardened, and he said: ‘I would like it very much, sir – but – but – I must repay you for the sum you expended to save Luff!’

  This declaration confronted Alverstoke at once with a novel situation, and a dilemma. No other member of his family had ever felt it incumbent upon him (or her) to repay the sums he had from time to time disbursed: all too many of them demanded unlimited largesse as a right; and not two hours previously he had registered a silent vow to decline to assume the smallest responsibility for Fred Merriville’s sons. That was one thing. He now discovered that it was quite another to allow a stripling to hand over to him, out of what he guessed to be a small allowance, whatever sum Charles Trevor had been obliged to spend on Lufra’s behalf. Fighting against fate, he said: ‘Believe me, it is quite unnecessary! I neither know nor care what it cost to redeem Lufra – and if you badger me on this very boring matter I shall not invite you to go with me when I try out my new team!’

  There was a moment’s tense silence; then Jessamy raised his eyes, no longer glowing, but uncomfortably austere. ‘Very well, sir,’ he said quietly. ‘Will you tell me, if you please, what I owe you?’

  ‘No, young Stiff-rump! I will not!’

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir, but there is no reason that I know of why you should be obliged to pay for my dog’s trespass.’

  ‘Then you cannot be aware that your father – er – commended you all to my care,’ replied his lordship, driven into the last ditch.

  ‘My sister told me something of the sort,’ said Jessamy, frowning, ‘but I don’t see how that can have been, for I know he left no Will.’

  ‘Since the matter was between him and me, it would be astonishing if you did see how it came about. It doesn’t concern you. As for Luff’s misdemeanour, I wish to hear no more about it. Don’t take him into the Green Park again!’

  The deliberate hauteur with which he spoke had its calculated effect: Jessamy’s conscience might trouble him, but it was superseded by a vague but horrid fear that he had committed a social solecism. He stammered: ‘N-no, sir! It – it is very kind of you! I didn’t know – ! Pray don’t be offended! One – one doesn’t like to be beholden – But if you are indeed our guardian it alters the case – I suppose!’

  The Marquis smiled at him, which, as it was not given to him to read the thoughts hidden by the smile, very much relieved his mind. Had he known that the Marquis was wondering what madness had seized him, and to what tiresome lengths he might be expected to go now that he had so rashly acknowledged the Merrivilles’ claim upon him, Jessamy would have suffered an agony of mortification; but as he knew nothing about his lordship’s habitual reluctance to interest himself in the affairs of his relatives he was able to take his leave blithely, and to stride back to Upper Wimpole Street in the best of spirits, and with his head full of the delightful prospect of driving to Richmond with his lordship, and even, perhaps, of being allowed to handle the reins himself for a little way.

  Meanwhile, the Marquis had set out for Wardour Street, his youthful companion prancing beside him, and beguiling the tedium of the way by describing to him in detail the various exhibits he had that morning seen at Merlin’s Mechanical Museum. These included such attractions as a juggler, an aerial cavalcade, Merlin’s Cave, and a set of Antique Whispering Busts (very ingenious); but these had not interested Felix as much as a hydraulic vase, a band of mechanical music, and a mechanical cruising frigate. If it was still in existence (but his little guide-book was rather out-of-date), he meant next to visit an exhibition at Spring Gardens, where Maillardet’s Automaton was to be seen. This marvel, according to the tattered guide-book he dragged from his pocket, was a musical lady, who was advertised, rather alarmingly, to perform most of the functions of animal life, and to play sixteen airs upon an organised pianoforte, by the actual pressure of the fingers. No, he had not visited the British Museum: except for a collection of stuffed birds, it held nothing but fusty old things, which only such people as Jessamy liked.

  Several persons with whom Alverstoke was well acquainted were encountered on the way, a circumstance which led, later, to a good deal of discussion in the clubs. The merchant-dandy, Mr Thomas Raikes, known to the ton as Apollo, because (said the irreverent) he had risen in the east and was setting in the west, had been dumbfounded to see Alverstoke with a schoolboy beside him when he had emerged from his own house in Berkeley Square; and Mr Rufus Lloyd, meeting Alverstoke in Bond Street, and asking whither he was bound, was later able to disclose, in bewildered accents, that he was going to visit