For a moment Pratt looks as if he would try to argue; to his credit he thinks better of it. “Have it your way, Luxton. The plain truth it shall be. My tale is about a boy. A foundling boy, an orphan, no doubt. He’s a strange, half-grown lad. I don’t know how old; at a glance I’d say about as old as your daughter her–this is your daughter, is it not?” He jerks a thumb in my direction. “She’s a bit young to be a wife, to my way of thinking, but to each his own.”

I feel my cheeks redden. “The girl is no part of your tale; leave her out of it, if you please,” Father says harshly.

Pratt lifts his hands in apology and continues. “I meant no offense. This boy I speak of—he came to live with me nearly two months ago. Before that he’d been raised by a local friar; before the friar, God only knows where he was whelped. He’s not much to look at, a skittish, wild-eyed sort of waif. You know the type: flinches when you speak to him, never lifts his eyes from his shoes, a body so thin a strong wind could snap him in two like a dead branch.”

“The company of poets has taken its toll on you, Pratt,” Father says wryly. “Judging from your description, this urchin hardly seems a worthwhile addition to your household. Why did you take him in to begin with?”

Pratt squirms. “Well, you know how it is. There’s no end to the work in my business, and an extra set of hands is always welcome. And the scrawny ragamuffin scarcely ate, so he was no expense to keep. He never took any gruel or bread. Now and then I’d catch him eating a bit of rabbit or pigeon he’d caught on his own. I let him sleep in the coal bin and put him to work gathering firewood and doing errands for the cook.”

“So you took the child as an unpaid servant,” Father observes. “A slave, to put it bluntly.”

“Better that than freezing by the roadside!” Pratt retorts. “I could tell right off he was an odd one, but he did his work without complaint. After he got his bearings, one day he asks if he might start bringing in the afternoon tea for the patients. Like a fool I let him.”

“A fool?” Father interjects sharply. “In what way?”

Pratt wrings his hands as if he is trying to wring the words out of himself. “A fool, yes … I wonder what you will make of this, Luxton—the wretched brat cured my inmates!”

“Cured them—of what?”