He said it, not knowing what else to say, to please the boy. They went down together to the great dame’s house, full already of small boys settling into their familiar quarters, upon whom Val looked with all the wondering envy and respect natural to a freshman. He had himself assumed the tall hat for the first time in his life, and the sight of so many tall hats moving about everywhere confused yet excited him. His tutor, who was not his “dame,” lived in a tiny house attached to a big pupil-room, and had no accommodation for boys or for much else, except the blue-and-white china in which his soul delighted. Mr Gerald Grinder, like his brother Mr Cyril Grinder, who had been Val’s tutor at Eskside, had one of the finest minds of his time; but the chief way in which this made itself evident to the outer world was in his furniture, and the fittings-up of his little house, every “detail” in which he flattered himself was a study. It was a very commonplace little house, but the thought that had been expended on its decoration might have built pyramids--if anything so rude and senseless as building pyramids could have occurred to the refined intelligence of a man of Mr Gerald Grinder’s day. Val gazed at all the velvet brackets, and all the antique cabinets (which had been “picked up” in holiday travels all over the world, and were each the subject of a tale), and all the china, with a sense of failing breath and space too small for him; while his grandfather engaged Mr Grinder in conversation, and pointed out the boy’s peculiarities, as if these characteristics could be of any particular interest to any one out of Val’s own family--and the young tutor listened with a smile. “I don’t doubt we shall soon know each other,” he said suavely, and shook hands with Val, and dismissed him: to receive just such a description of another boy next moment from another anxious parent. “Whether is it Ross or Smith now, that is the self-willed one, and which is the boy that catches cold?” the young tutor asked himself, when the audience was over. He concluded, finally, that the latter case must be Smith’s, since he was brought by his mother--a generalisation which perhaps was justifiable. Poor Mr Grinder! he knew all the marks of his china as well as these tiresome people knew, so to speak, the manufacturer’s marks on their boys; but how much more interesting was one than the other! He took a walk up to Windsor to an old furniture shop, where bargains of precious ware were now and then to be had, with a delicious sense of relief when it was too late to expect more pupils--and fell upon a bit of real Nankin there which refreshed his very soul.