Mark looks round, sees Tom, and calls him in.

“Mr. Thurnall, I am glad to meet you, sir.  You did me good service at Pentremochyn, and did it cheaply.  I was agreeably surprised, I confess, at receiving a bill for four pounds seven shillings and sixpence, where I expected one of twenty or thirty.”

“I charged according to what my time was really worth there, my lord.  I heartily wish it had been worth more.”

“No doubt,” says my lord, in the blandest, but the driest tone.

Some men would have, under a sense of Tom’s merits, sent him a cheque off-hand for five-and-twenty pounds:  but that is not Lord Minchampstead’s way of doing business.  He had paid simply the sum asked:  but he had set Tom down in his memory as a man whom he could trust to do good work, and to do it cheaply; and now—­

“You are going to join the Turkish contingent?”

“I am.”

“You know that part of the world well, I believe?”

“Intimately.”

“And the languages spoken there?”

“By no means all.  Russian and Tartar well; Turkish tolerably; with a smattering of two or three Circassian dialects.”

“Humph!  A fair list.  Any Persian?”

“Only a few words.”

“Humph!  If you can learn one language I presume you can learn another. 
Now, Mr. Thurnall, I have no doubt that you will do your duty in the
Turkish contingent.”

Tom bowed.

“But I must ask you if your resolution to join it is fixed?”

“I only join it because I can get no other employment at the seat of war.”

“Humph!  You wish to go then, in any case, to the seat of war?”

“Certainly.”

“No doubt you have sufficient reasons....  Armsworth, this puts the question in a new light.”

Tom looked round at Mark, and, behold, his face bore a ludicrous mixture of anger and disappointment, and perplexity.  He seemed to be trying to make signals to Tom, and to be afraid of doing so openly before the great man.

“He is as wilful and as foolish as a girl, my lord; and I’ve told him so.”

“Everybody knows his own business best, Armsworth; Mr. Thurnall, have you any fancy for the post of Queen’s messenger?”

“I should esteem myself only too happy as one.”

“They are not to be obtained now as easily as they were fifty years ago; and are given, as you may know, to a far higher class of men than they were formerly.  But I shall do my best to obtain you one, when an opportunity offers”

Tom was beginning his profusest thanks:  for was not his fortune made? but Lord Minchampstead stopped him with an uplifted finger.

“And, meanwhile, there are foreign employments of which neither those who bestow them, nor those who accept them, are expected to talk much:  but for which you, if I am rightly informed, would be especially fitted.”

Tom bowed; and his face spoke a hundred assents.