‘Yes, yes,’ said Grandfather, yawning, ‘I am sure you do. And I am sure you trust your plug, don’t you? But the truth is we cannot know who this James Henry Hayward is and how he may react if given the chance. How you may grapple with one another, which of you shall be dominant. Your own dear Cousin Rippit was stolen from us by his birth object, by a letter opener called Alexander Erkmann, he stole Rippit from us.’

‘But Rippit died in the heaps.’

‘That is what we told you, but no, he was stolen by his letter opener, which, in human shape, hid in our train and took Rippit, in what form we cannot know, away from us into London. It was his body servant, a mongrel creature, who quite from grief lost himself in the heaps. My poor Rippit has never been found, and all because he let his object get the wiser of him.’

‘Poor, poor lost Rippit.’

‘Thus, Clod, never trust a thing.’

‘And, Grandfather, if we are separated from our objects, what then, what shall happen?’

‘Why, death, Clod, only death. Death for both the person and his object. When one dies, both die. We are stuck with one another, only one may be about at a time. That is how it is.’

‘And so Aunt Rosamud is a bucket.’

‘No, Clod, no, Alice Higgs is a door handle once more, and your aunt is recovering, you returned the handle to her just in time; I was quite able to persuade Alice Higgs back into brass.’

‘Alice Higgs is a small girl.’

‘Alice Higgs is a brass door handle. There was time to put it right. But you must not let this alarm you. You would not know this but you have an uncle who is an inkwell upstairs, and my own brother Gubriel is a potato peeler. My mother, my own mother, a tooth mug. And my former teacher, so free with his punishments, is now no more than a length of bending cane. It is the way of things, Clod, nothing can be done about it.’

‘It’s horrible! It’s monstrous!’

‘It does seem so at first. And so, we keep it from our young, to a point, but then if a young Iremonger is deemed promising he is moved to the city, to Filching, only to Filching, no further, and he is informed and he becomes an important part of the great Iremonger machine.’

‘I want nothing to do with it!’

‘You are something to do with it. Your help shall protect our family.’

‘I shan’t do it.’