"How do you do, sir?"

"What's your name besides Christopher?" demanded the visitor. He had
queer, light blue, piercing eyes that were curiously unexpressive and
looked through one to the back of one's head, but, unlike Mr. Aston's
kind, steady gaze, that invited one to open one's soul to it, the
immediate impulse here was to pull down the blinds of one's
individuality in hasty self-defence, and realise, even in doing it,
that it was too late.

"Aston," said Christopher, rather hastily, escaping to the tea-table.

Peter Masters looked from him to Aymer with the same queer smile.

"Good-looking boy, Aymer," he said carelessly. "You call him Aston?"

"We've given him our own name," said Aymer steadily, "because it saves
complications and explanations."

"A very wise precaution. What are you going to do with him
eventually?"

"I hardly know yet. What were you saying about the strike?"

They fell to discussing a recent labour trouble in the Midlands, and
Christopher gathered a hazy notion that their visitor employed vast
numbers of men who were not particularly fond of him, and for whom he
had not only no affection, but no sort of feeling whatever, except as
instruments of his will.

Christopher was very glad he was not one of them; he felt rather
hostile to the big, careless, opulent man who spoke to Aymer with a
familiarity that Christopher resented and had already apparently
forgotten his own small existence.

The forget was but apparent, however, for presently he turned sharply
to the boy and asked him if he had ever been down a coal mine.
Christopher, putting control on his own hot curiosity to explore the
subject, answered that he had not, and gave Mr. Masters his second cup
of tea without any sugar to emphasise his own indifference to the
questioner, who unfortunately never noticed the omission, but drank
his tea with equal satisfaction.

"Ever been over an iron foundry?" persisted Mr. Masters, with the same
scrutinising gaze.

Caesar was playing with his favourite long tortoise-shell paper-knife;
he seemed unusually indifferent to Christopher's manners, nor did he
intervene to save him from the string of sharp questions that ensued.

Christopher made effort to answer the questioner with ordinary
politeness, but he was not communicative, and Mr. Masters presently
leant back in his chair and laughed.

"Young man, you'll get on in the world," he said approvingly, "for
you've learnt the great secret