“Morgan is not beautiful—he looks like a … well, I won’t say what he looks like because it’s not very polite. Anyway, you don’t talk about men being beautiful; you talk about their being handsome.”

“Maybe you don’t know what girls consider handsome. Girls think Morgan is very, very handsome. All the girls in his class are in love with him; they fight over who gets to sit next to him at lunch.” She has guessed right: this eight-year-old has a precocious interest in females. Artemio looks put out, and concludes by muttering that he doesn’t think any girls he knows—certainly not any English girls—would think Morgan was handsome.

Morgan hasn’t even looked up from his cards.

“What’s he babbling about?” he asks, finally.

“He says he’s better-looking than you.”

Morgan casts a look of frank amazement at Artemio. “T’es pédé, ou quoi?”

“What did he say?” Artemio demands. “What’s Té pédé?”

Rat hesitates, not wanting to say Morgan’s inquiring about his sexual preferences. “He wants to know if you collect football cards.”

“Football cards? You must be joking. Nobody plays with football cards anymore; they’re totally naff. Ask him which team he supports. Is he for Paris Saint-Germain? I bet he is.”

Rat translates, watching Artemio get ready to sully the honor of whichever team Morgan favors.

Once again, Morgan doesn’t bother to look up from sorting his cards. “I don’t ‘support’ a football team,” he says. “I run one. I’m captain.”

Artemio is momentarily stumped, but soon comes back. “How can you run a football team, when you’re here in England? I don’t suppose you run an English team, do you?” He laughs, triumphantly.

Rat feels a tiny glint of sympathy for this boy who can’t stop making such an idiot of himself. She sighs, stows the book under her pillow, stretches, and goes out into the kitchen, where Kate is slicing bread.

“Can I help you with tea?”

“Tea” is what the British call children’s supper. In Kate and Gillem’s house, the children eat tea at six and go to bed at seven-thirty, and the adults eat later. Rat is in some amphibious state between adult and child, which means she can choose either the six o’clock sitting or the nine. Normally she would prefer to eat with the grown-ups, but her evenings with Gillem and Kate are getting to be a strain.

They are definitely the most courteous human beings she has ever met. Over dinner—usually consisting of dishes which Kate has discovered Rat to be partial to—they will draw her out, asking her about the kind of music she and her friends listen to, or what films she enjoys; they in turn tell her about English fashions, as gleaned from Kate’s nieces and nephews.