“You won’t be mykin’ anythink on them, y’r gryce,” said the lad with a humour which opened the doors of Ian Stafford’s heart wide; for to him heaven itself would be insupportable if it had no humorists.

“I’ll get at them in other ways,” Stafford rejoined.  “I’ll get my profit, never fear.  Now what about breakfast?  You’ve sold all your papers, you know.”

“I’m fair ready for it, y’r gryce,” was the reply, and now the lad’s glance went eagerly towards the door, for the tension of labour was relaxed, and hunger was scraping hard at his vitals.

“Well, sit down—­this breakfast isn’t cold yet....  But, no, you’d better have a wash-up first, if you can wait,” Stafford added, and rang a bell.

“Wot, ’ere—­brekfist wiv y’r gryce ’ere?”

“Well, I’ve had mine”—­Stafford made a slight grimace—­” and there’s plenty left for you, if you don’t mind eating after me.”

“I dusted me clothes dis mornin’,” said the boy, with an attempt to justify his decision to eat this noble breakfast.  “An’ I washed me ’ends—­but pypers is muck,” he added.

A moment later he was in the fingers of Gleg the valet in the bath-room, and Stafford set to work to make the breakfast piping hot again.  It was an easy task, as heaters were inseparable from his bachelor meals, and, though this was only the second breakfast he had eaten since his return to England after three years’ absence, everything was in order.

For Gleg was still more the child of habit—­and decorous habit—­than himself.  It was not the first time that Gleg had had to deal with his master’s philanthropic activities.  Much as he disapproved of them, he could discriminate; and there was that about the newsboy which somehow disarmed him.  He went so far as to heap the plate of the lad, and would have poured the coffee too, but that his master took the pot from his hand and with a nod and a smile dismissed him; and his master’s smile was worth a good deal to Gleg.  It was an exacting if well-paid service, for Ian Stafford was the most particular man in Europe, and he had grown excessively so during the past three years, which, as Gleg observed, had brought great, if quiet, changes in him.  He had grown more studious, more watchful, more exclusive in his daily life, and ladies of all kinds he had banished from direct personal share in his life.  There were no more little tea-parties and dejeuners chez lui, duly chaperoned by some gracious cousin or aunt—­for there was no embassy in Europe where he had not relatives.

“’Ipped—­a bit ’ipped.  ’E ’as found ’em out, the ’uzzies,” Gleg had observed; for he had decided that the general cause of the change in his master was Woman, though he did not know the particular woman who had ’ipped him.

As the lad ate his wonderful breakfast, in which nearly half a pot of marmalade and enough butter for three ordinary people figured, Stafford read the papers attentively, to give his guest a fair chance at the food and to overcome his self-consciousness.  He got an occasional glance at the trencherman, however, as he changed the sheets, stepped across the room to get a cigarette, or poked the small fire—­for, late September as it was, a sudden cold week of rain had come and gone, leaving the air raw; and a fire was welcome.