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emancipation has mostly to do with the freedom to engage in improper conversation, by which definition—”
    â€œI object. I only engage in improper conversation twice a day, at the outmost.”
    â€œâ€”by which definition, I insist that I am not emancipated at all.”
    â€œNow, where’s the logic in that? Just because your rigid old society has decided that certain subjects—sexual relations, for example—are dirty things that must not be discussed.”
    I said quietly, “You couldn’t be more mistaken, your lordship.We do not restrain ourselves from discussing human love because it is
dirty
.”
    â€œWhat, then?”
    â€œBecause it is sacred.”
    Silverton wrapped his hand around the bowl of his pipe and leaned forward on his elbows, contemplating the coast of Europe. A fishing smack caught the early sun, and its sail turned to gold.
    â€œNow that,” he said, “is the kind of logic I can’t possibly answer. Have you stomach for breakfast, do you think?”

    As it turned out, I did not have the stomach for breakfast, and found myself a short while later back in my berth, attempting to examine the stack of papers in the drawer of my traveling desk without losing what little porridge remained to me.
    The desk had been bequeathed to me by my father, together with nearly all of his material possessions. (A naturalist cousin had received his extensive collection of insects, neatly classified and pinned at perfect intervals in a series of glass cases, of which I had a horror: not because they were insects, but because they were dead. I’m told the cousin treasures them still, however.) I believe Papa had had the article specially made for himself, upon his appointment to the post of personal secretary to the Duke of Olympia, around the time of his marriage to my mother, and I have never seen its equal for both usefulness and beauty. There are clever drawers for paper and pens and ink and everything one could wish, and the inner compartment locks in such a way that only the nimblest of lock-pickers could find his way in.
    Perhaps, at this point, I should make clear that my father—dearer to me than any living human being—was not my fatherin the biological sense. He married my mother when I was just past my third birthday, and lavished me from the beginning with such a comforting excess of paternal care that I have never regarded him as a stepfather, or as anything other than my true and devoted parent. When Mama died a few years later, he took me under the shelter of his arm and promised to serve me as both father and mother, and he kept his word faithfully until the moment of his death. Every summer, during the school holidays, he would take me on what he called a journey of discovery: a week in which we might explore the Peaks or the Lakes, the fields of Bosworth or the Outer Hebrides, without a soul for company except each other. As we tramped across the damp meadows and pebbled sun-warmed beaches, discussing history and politics and such books as we had mutually read, I thought how lucky I was to have him entirely and intimately to myself at last, without any other claims on his time and attention.
    But always he would bring his beautiful wooden desk and a stack of papers, and as the train clattered along an elderly branch line, or the wind howled softly outside the window of our place of lodging, he would place his spectacles on the bridge of his prominent nose, lift the desk onto his lap, and busy himself in the transcription of letters and the composition of memoranda. I remember the gentle scratch of his pen and the scent of ink and contentment as I sat beside him, immersed in a novel, and even now, as I hold that same desk in place on my own adult lap, I can smell the good British air, the greenness of eternal summer, and it seems as if my father still sits beside me.
    Sometimes, in fact, the illusion is so acute that his image actually