"Dollops, Dollops! You'll be eating the wake up at your own funeral, you young gourmand!" threw in Cleek laughingly. "You've a constitution like an ostrich. I'm sure, if you were actually starving, you'd manage to gnaw an umbrella--spokes and all!... Heigho! This is a queer world, isn't it? Here's me sitting here in this little inn-place, on the top of the Highlands, with the heart of me wandering away in other places, and the soul of me sometimes hungry for the sight of other worlds across the sea--to which I've closed the door of my own accord and shut the sight of their dear blessedness forever from me! And there's those people up at Aygon Castle. Bitter, cruel, hard to each other. Pulling this way and that, until their hearts must break with the strain of the fray--and with the whole structure of their dear inheritance forever with them, so that they need never hunger and thirst for a sight of it as--as others do. Heigho! but it's a topsy-turvy, crazy sort of a world we live in, isn't it?" Something in the tone of Cleek's voice caused Dollops instantly to pause. Eyes wide, mouth open, face gone suddenly pale, he set down his knife and fork and reaching a shaking hand across the table laid it upon Cleek's. "Guv'nor," he said, in a scared, hushed sort of voice, "you ain't a-wishin' ter go back--to all them Maurevanian royalties, are yer? Wiv a throne an' a crahn and a bloomin' spectur in yer 'and? You ain't a-pinin' fer the Crash Pots, I 'opes? For as sure as I know anyfink of anybody, they'd never let sich folks as Mr. Narkom an'--an'--me come within twenty miles of yer. And you ain't--ain't wishin' ter l-lose us, are yer, sir? It would fair break my 'eart if I thought _that_." Cleek put back his head and laughed, laughed heartily, with his eyes wet. There was a sob in the boy's voice as he spoke, and the look of injured worship in his eyes would have wrung tears from a stone. Cleek stopped laughing suddenly, and sat forward and looked straight at the boy. "Dollops," he said quietly, "I wouldn't barter _this_ inheritance--of Love--which the good Lord has given me, for all the thrones and 'specturs' and 'crash-pots' that the world could hold. For true friendship is the best inheritance of all. But there are times when a man must be allowed to go down into the deeps of his memory and take a maudlin joy in counting over the hidden pearls there. I've no doubt you do it yourself, lad--and shed a tear in solitude for the days when you had a mother to care for you, and you weren't just a frightened little sinner of an orphan boy."