hich was in vogue forty years ago; frock coat with a velvet
collar, buttoned up, but not too far; high and tight blue cravat below
an immense shirt collar; a certain care and richness of dress
throughout, but soberly behind the fashion: while the hat was a very
shabby and broken one, and the whip still more shabby and broken; all
which indicated to Tom that his lordship let his tailor and his valet
dress him; and though not unaware that it behoved him to set out his
person as it deserved, was far too fine a gentleman to trouble himself
about looking fine.

Mark looks round, sees Tom, and calls him in.

"Mr. Thurnall, I am glad to meet you, sir. You did me good service at
Pentremochyn, and did it cheaply. I was agreeably surprised, I confess,
at receiving a bill for four pounds seven shillings and sixpence, where
I expected one of twenty or thirty."

"I charged according to what my time was really worth there, my lord. I
heartily wish it had been worth more."

"No doubt," says my lord, in the blandest, but the driest tone.

Some men would have, under a sense of Tom's merits, sent him a cheque
off-hand for five-and-twenty pounds: but that is not Lord
Minchampstead's way of doing business. He had paid simply the sum asked:
but he had set Tom down in his memory as a man whom he could trust to do
good work, and to do it cheaply; and now--

"You are going to join the Turkish contingent?"

"I am."

"You know that part of the world well, I believe?"

"Intimately."

"And the languages spoken there?"

"By no means all. Russian and Tartar well; Turkish tolerably; with a
smattering of two or three Circassian dialects."

"Humph! A fair list. Any Persian?"

"Only a few words."

"Humph! If you can learn one language I presume you can learn another.
Now, Mr. Thurnall, I have no doubt that you will do your duty in the
Turkish contingent."

Tom bowed.

"But I must ask you if your resolution to join it is fixed?"

"I only join it because I can get no other employment at the seat of
war."

"Humph! You wish to go then, in any case, to the seat of war?"

"Certainly."

"No doubt you have sufficient reasons.... Armsworth, this puts the
question in a new light."

Tom looked round at Mark, and, behold, his face bore a ludicrous mixture
of anger and disappointment, and perplexity. He seemed to be trying to
make signals to Tom, and to be afraid of doing so openly before the
great man.

"He is as wilful and as foolish