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what I really thought.
    "I hardly know him, sir. I've taken his portrait twice, I believe, him and his nephew."
    At that Mr Everett barked out a sharp laugh and said, "Come, now. That lad is no more Whitlock's nephew than Wilkes is yours. John Percival is a pampered little catamite who sells his arse for fancy suits."
    I remained silent, staring fixedly at a point on the desk as I tried to calm my flaming face, but Mr Everett leaned in as well, and, alarmed with the lingering sense that he might suddenly decide to be angry, I flew back to sit straight in my chair.
    "Oh," was all I could think of to say. Fumbling for something more suitable and coming up with nothing, my idiotic mouth decided to say indignantly, "Archie would never sell his arse for a suit," then I snapped it closed and covered it with my hand for good measure, wanting to cry with mortification. Mr Everett, however, was laughing suddenly, that huge roaring theatre sound of his that filled the room like thunder, and he leaned back in his chair wiping his eyes with his handkerchief.
    "He might sell it for a pretty silk frock though, eh?" he said, and found himself amusing enough to start laughing again while I sat there in humiliated silence and willed my heart to stop beating in my chest and end all this torture. "Do take that chagrined puppy look off your face, Jim. This needn't mean the end of the world, you know." As he made the effort to calm himself I finally met his eyes, and found there a cunning gleam that made me feel extremely uneasy.
    "It certainly feels like it, sir, if you don't mind m y speaking plainly."
    "My dear boy. If you're willing, it could be the beginning."

CHAPTER VIII
     
    Mr Everett had offered to take me part of the way in his carriage and I declined, craving the walk and the silence that evening so I might make some sense of my thoughts, but they buzzed around my head like trapped flies all the way to Lambeth and even before I reached the bridge I was angry with myself for not accepting. The evening was chilly and the breeze found its way beneath my upturned collar as I crossed the river, following the muddled map a cabbie had drawn for me with a stub of pencil on the back of a playbill. The district was more noisy than where I lived in Bloomsbury, busy with horses and carriages and people walking and children calling to each other as they played hopscotch on the pavements, and the narrow streets and multitude of houses seemed to trap the dingy yellowish fog low down so that everybody who walked through it appeared jaundiced.
    When I turned the last corner into Dolland Street I slowed my pace so much that I nearly stopped walking altogether, as though a warning hand had caught me by the collar to drag me away from the madness of what I was about to do; but after coming all this way, to turn back when I was already on Archie's street, mere yards away from him, was impossible.
    The house was easy to pick out from its neighbours, one of only three on the street with shop fronts; 'Joseph Wilkes, Boot & Shoe Repair' was painted on the sign above the window, and I could see more painted signs in the windowpanes and displays of lasts and brushes. Archie had told me his father was a cobbler, that he would have become the same had he not met Mr Everett, how glad he was that he wouldn't have to do it now he had taken the job with us, and a dreadful sort of guilt began to settle in my stomach as I imagined his dismay at coming back to work he hated so.
    I could see a light in the window, and as I neared the shop I saw a figure moving inside. I thought for a moment it might be Archie, until the man noticed me standing on the step and came over to open the front door. He was taller and broader than Archie, with a dark beard and eyeglasses; yet there was something so instantly familiar about his face, the green of his eyes and the shape of his jaw, that it almost felt as though we had already met.
    "I beg your pardon, sir, we're closed."
    "Oh, no,