f! It was beyond the verge of the horizons of the
drapery trade. Mr. Knight had a shop-walker, aged probably thirty-eight
and a half, who was receiving precisely two guineas a week, and working
thirty hours a week longer than Tom.

On the strength of this amazing two guineas, Tom, had he chosen, might
easily have regained the long-lost esteem of his relatives. But he did
not choose. He became more than ever a mystery to them, and a troubling
mystery, not a mystery that one could look squarely in the face and then
pass by. His ideals, if they could be called ideals, were always in
collision with those of the rest of the house. Neither his aunts nor his
uncle could ever be quite sure that he was not enjoying some joke which
they were not enjoying. Once he had painted Aunt Annie's portrait.
'Never let me see that thing again!' she exclaimed when she beheld it
complete. She deemed it an insult, and she was not alone in her opinion.
'Do you call this art?' said Mr. Knight. 'If this is art, then all I can
say is I'm glad I wasn't brought up to understand art, as you call it.'
Nevertheless, somehow the painting was exhibited at South Kensington in
the national competition of students works, and won a medal. 'Portrait
of my Aunt,' Tom had described it in the catalogue, and Aunt Annie was
furious a second time. 'However,' she said, 'no one'll recognise me,
that's one comfort!' Still, the medal weighed heavily; it was a gold
medal. Difficult to ignore its presence in the house!

Tom's crowning sin was that he was such a bad example to Henry. Henry
worshipped him, and the more Tom was contemned the more Henry
worshipped.

'You'll surely be very late, Tom,' Mrs. Knight ventured to remark at
half-past nine.

Mr. Knight had descended into the shop, and Aunt Annie also.

'Oh no,' said Tom--'not more than is necessary.' And then he glanced at
Henry. 'Look here, my bold buccaneer, you've got nothing to do just now,
have you? You can stroll along with me a bit, and we'll see if we can
buy you a twopenny toy for a birthday present.'

Tom always called Henry his 'bold buccaneer.' He had picked up the term
of endearment from the doctor with the black bag twelve years ago. Henry
had his cap on in two seconds, and Mrs. Knight beamed at this unusual
proof of kindly thought on Tom's part.

In the street Tom turned westwards instead of to the City, where his
daily work lay.

'Aren't you going to work to-day?' Henry asked in surprise.