“Corsets, eh? Like tying a belt around a balloon. You always think it’s goin’ to blow. Above. Or below.” He makes a violent gesture that brings to mind a man with a garrote. Then he recalls he is speaking to a gentleman, albeit a schoolboy, tousle-haired under his cap. “Begging your pardon, of course. I was only speaking in jest.”

Charlie is unsurprised by his sudden deference, at once strategic and real. No police, no magistrates are needed to enforce it. It is written into their complexions, the man’s Soot-coarsened, Charlie’s soft and smooth. All the same, the grocer’s comments about the lady have put Charlie in a difficult position. As a gentleman, it is his duty to reprimand the man. But Charlie is also a minor, instructed to respect his elders, irrespective of their station. That, and he is here for a purpose.

A new customer relieves him of his uncertainty. It is the vicar, come in for a tuppence-worth of humbugs. Charlie immediately cedes ground to him, stands by the door with his cap in his hand, listens to their small talk. On his way out, the vicar stops, places his eyes on Charlie, and leaves them there for longer than is comfortable. He is an old man, close-cropped white whiskers meeting underneath his chin.

“Skiving?” he asks at last.

“I have a pass. From the school.”

“Ah. A good boy then.” The vicar digs in his paper bag. “Here, have a humbug.”

His eyes won’t leave Charlie until he has put the stripy sweet in his mouth. Then the old man sniffs the air.

“It smells of Smoke in here. Underneath all the sweet. Not yours? His then. Well, his kind are meant to. Go to hell, I mean. God’s natural order. Good day.”

He says this quite loudly, even cheerfully, then walks out of the door. Again both Charlie and the shopkeeper find themselves looking out the big front window, watching after the flutter of dark skirts.

“A true man of God,” Mr. Hodgson declares, rattling the vicar’s pennies in his fist. “Righteous. If not as charming as the lady.” His tone remains oddly poised between deference and derision: accepting the truth of the vicar’s words, yet enraged by them all the same. “And what would you like then?”

Charlie has anticipated the question and has worked out his answer, word for word, on the way over; has gone so far as to try it out on the empty country road where there was no one to hear. But now, faced with this man, his wheedling manner, the coarseness of his pockmarked cheeks, and the heavy atmosphere of the shop, he hesitates.

“Sir?”

“Liquorice,” Charlie improvises. “A penny’s worth.”

“Sweet or salty?”

“Salty.”

“I’ve snails and coins.”

“Snails, please. And a quarter pound of hazelnuts.”

“Anything else?”