But she did not frown long: after all, the fonder Emily Gibbs was of him the more carefully she would watch over him.
At supper in the servants' hall Emily Gibbs underwent a severe cross-examination.

The coming of the Lump to the court had indeed set tongues wagging; and Rawlings, since he had failed to find the duke quite satisfactory, was doing nothing to check it.

The chief housemaid and the second cook (the _chef_ was a Frenchman with a strong Italian accent which marked also his cooking) seemed to have made up their minds that Emily Gibbs must necessarily have been made the repository of the secret of the Lump's origin; and they spared no effort to extract that secret from her.

Emily Gibbs had the most uncomfortable supper of her life: her fellow-servants, naturally, resented bitterly the fact that she had met the Lump for the first time that very day at Waterloo station.

They wanted pegs on which to hang romance; and she did not provide them.
At last the second cook said: "Well: it's as plain as a pikestaff to me that that little boy is the son of a young lady as his grace was in love with before he ever met the duchess.