eat? I take it that as you must have started very
early, you have not had any breakfast?" Rupert smiled quite genially:

"That is true, sir. I haven't broken bread since dinner last night, and
I am ravenously hungry." Father rang the bell, and told the footman who
answered it to send the housekeeper. When she came, father said to her:

"Mrs. Martindale, take this boy to your room and give him some
breakfast." Rupert stood very still for some seconds. His face had got
red again after his paleness. Then he bowed to my father, and followed
Mrs. Martindale, who had moved to the door.

Nearly an hour afterwards my father sent a servant to tell him to come to
the study. My mother was there, too, and I had gone back with her. The
man came back and said:

"Mrs. Martindale, sir, wishes to know, with her respectful service, if
she may have a word with you." Before father could reply mother told him
to bring her. The housekeeper could not have been far off--that kind are
generally near a keyhole--for she came at once. When she came in, she
stood at the door curtseying and looking pale. Father said:

"Well?"

"I thought, sir and ma'am, that I had better come and tell you about
Master Sent Leger. I would have come at once, but I feared to disturb
you."

"Well?" Father had a stern way with servants. When I'm head of the
family I'll tread them under my feet. That's the way to get real
devotion from servants!

"If you please, sir, I took the young gentleman into my room and ordered
a nice breakfast for him, for I could see he was half famished--a growing
boy like him, and so tall! Presently it came along. It was a good
breakfast, too! The very smell of it made even me hungry. There were
eggs and frizzled ham, and grilled kidneys, and coffee, and buttered
toast, and bloater-paste--"

"That will do as to the menu," said mother. "Go on!"

"When it was all ready, and the maid had gone, I put a chair to the table
and said, 'Now, sir, your breakfast is ready!' He stood up and said,
'Thank you, madam; you are very kind!' and he bowed to me quite nicely,
just as if I was a lady, ma'am!"

"Go on," said mother.

"Then, sir, he held out his hand and said, 'Good-bye, and thank you,' and
he took up his cap.

"'But aren't you going to have any breakfast, sir?' I says.

"'No, thank you, madam,' he said; 'I couldn't eat here . . . in this
house, I mean!' Well, ma'am, he looked so lonely that I felt my heart