“Gentleman!” murmured Matthew, discontented.

“Was valet to Mr. Priam Farll.  We’ve heard that everywhere.”

“I suppose you’ll not deny,” said Henry the younger, “that Priam Farll wouldn’t be likely to have two valets named Henry Leek?”

Crushed by this Socratic reasoning, Priam kept silence, nursing his knees and staring into the fire.

Alice went to the sideboard where she kept her best china, and took out three extra cups and saucers.

“I think we’d all better have some tea,” she said tranquilly.  And then she got the tea-caddy and put seven teaspoonfuls of tea into one of the tea-pots.

“It’s very kind of you, I’m sure,” whimpered the authentic Mrs. Henry Leek.

“Now, mother, don’t give way!” the curates admonished her.

“Don’t you remember, Henry,” she went on whimpering to Priam, “how you said you wouldn’t be married in a church, not for anybody?  And how I gave way to you, like I always did?  And don’t you remember how you wouldn’t let poor little Johnnie be baptized?  Well, I do hope your opinions have altered.  Eh, but it’s strange, it’s strange, how two of your sons, and just them two that you’d never set eyes on until this day, should have made up their minds to go into the church!  And thanks to Johnnie there, they’ve been able to.  If I was to tell you all the struggles we’ve had, you wouldn’t believe me.  They were clerks, and they might have been clerks to this day, if it hadn’t been for Johnnie.  But Johnnie could always earn money.  It’s that engineering!  And now Matthew’s second curate at St. Paul’s and getting fifty pounds a year, and Henry’ll have a curacy next month at Bermondsey—­it’s been promised, and all thanks to Johnnie!” She wept.

Johnnie, in the corner, who had so far done nought but knock at the door, maintained stiffly his policy of non-interference.

Priam Farll, angry, resentful, and quite untouched by the recital, shrugged his shoulders.  He was animated by the sole desire to fly from the widow and progeny of his late valet.  But he could not fly.  The Herculean John was too close to the door.  So he shrugged his shoulders a second time.

“Yes, sir,” said Matthew, “you may shrug your shoulders, but you can’t shrug us out of existence.  Here we are, and you can’t get over us.  You are our father, and I presume that a kind of respect is due to you.  Yet how can you hope for our respect?  Have you earned it?  Did you earn it when you ill-treated our poor mother?  Did you earn it when you left her, with the most inhuman cruelty, to fend for herself in the world?  Did you earn it when you abandoned your children born and unborn?  You are a bigamist, sir; a deceiver of women!  Heaven knows—­”

“Would you mind just toasting this bread?” Alice interrupted his impassioned discourse by putting the loaded toasting-fork into his hands, “while I make the tea?”

It was a novel way of stopping a mustang in full career, but it succeeded.