You were only pretending to
join in, now weren't you? How was it? Didn't you know the prayer?"

"No."

"Don't be so abrupt, my boy. Say 'sir' when you answer me. How is it
that you don't know it? You go to church, don't you?"

"No."

"Say 'sir.'"

"Sir."

"Well, chapel, then. You go to chapel, no doubt?"

Robert stared blankly.

"You don't? But surely your mother takes you----"

"I haven't got a mother." His voice sounded in his own ears like a
shout. He scowled down at the faces nearest him. He was ready to
fight them now. If they were going to say anything about his mother,
good or bad, he would fly at them, just as he had flown at his old
aggressors in the Terrace, regardless of size and numbers.

"Your father, then?"

"I haven't got a father."

His questioner smiled faintly, not without asperity.

"Come, come, you are not yet a gentleman in independent circumstances.
Who takes care of you?"

"Christine."

"And who, pray, is Christine?"

Who was Christine? It was as though suddenly the corner of a curtain
had been raised for a moment, letting him look through into a strange
new country.

"I don't know."

The clergyman waved his hand, damping down the titters that spluttered
up nervously, threatening to explode outright. He himself had an air
of slight dishevelment, as though his ideas had been blown about by a
rude wind.

"I remember--Mr. Morton spoke to me--your guardian, of course. You
should answer properly. But still, surely you have been taught--some
religious instruction. You say your prayers, don't you?"

"No." He added after a moment of sudden, vivid recollection: "Not now."

It was nothing short of a debacle. He had pulled out the keystone of
an invisible edifice which had come tumbling about their ears, leaving
him in safety. Without knowing how or why, he knew he had got the
better of them all. The grins died out of the upturned faces. They
looked at him with amazement, with horror, yes--with respect.

"But you have been taught your catechism--to--to believe in God?"

"No."

"But the hymn--at least you could have sung the hymn, my poor boy. You
can read, can't you?"

"No."

The awe passed before a storm of unchecked laughter. For one
spectacular moment he had held them all helpless, every one of them, by
the sheer audacity of his admissions. Now with one word he had
fallen--an ignominious, comic outcast. The clergyman turned away,
shaken but sa