Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 1.djvu/96

 about that lady, and had no desire for knowledge of Millicent's relationships. Moreover he always suffered, to sickness, when people began to hover about the question of his origin, the reasons why Pinnie had had the care of him from a baby. Mrs. Henning had been untidy, but at least her daughter could speak of her. 'Mr. Vetch has changed his lodgings: he moved out of No. 17, three years ago,' he said, to vary the topic. 'He couldn't stand the other people in the house; there was a man who played the accordeon.'

Millicent, however, was but moderately interested in this anecdote, and she wanted to know why people should like Mr. Vetch's fiddle any better. Then she added, 'And I think that while he was about it he might have put you into something better than a bookbinder's.'

'He wasn't obliged to put me into anything. It's a very good place.'

'All the same, it isn't where I should have looked to find you,' Millicent declared, not so much in the tone of wishing to pay him a compliment as of resentment at having miscalculated.

'Where should you have looked to find me? In the House of Commons? It's a pity you couldn't have told me in advance what you would have liked me to be.'

She looked at him, over her cup, while she drank, in several sips. 'Do you know what they used to say in the Place? That your father was a lord.'

'Very likely. That's the kind of rot they talk in that precious hole,' the young man said, without blenching.

'Well, perhaps he was,' Millicent ventured.