'Let him dine at his own table from now on!' snarled John, through a mouthful of 'Extraordinary Good Cake'. 'A little more ginger next time…?'

'I think not!' retorted Parthenope, tight-lipped. The set of her jaw was just like Gideon's.

Bevan politely kept away, especially after strong words passed between him and Parthenope. But once Gideon started to resist his father's plans, it was Bevan Bevan who added a fuse to the gunpowder by suddenly offering to pay for an apprenticeship with a printer his wife knew. John and Parthenope saw this as the ultimate treachery.

Robert Allibone, the printer, genuinely needed assistance with his business. Gideon was proposed to him by Bevan as a bright, honest boy who was keen to learn and would stay to a task. No mention was made of his troubled behaviour.

Bevan's intervention caused uproar. Gideon, of course, found it exciting to be at the centre of the quarrel. Parthenope had already spoiled two batches of buttered apple pudding, and John accidentally set fire to the house-of-easement in their yard while gloomily taking too many pipes of tobacco as he brooded. The half-built house-of-easement had never been in use, because it was a long-term project of the kind that remains a project. Nonetheless, John had been able to sit in the roofless structure enjoying quiet philosophy and flaunting at their neighbours, none of whom had one, the fact that the Jukes were constructing their own dunny. Now they must continue to throw their slops into the street and to have their nightsoil collected by sinister men with carts who tramped foul substances into the hall floorboards. John Jukes, who was only allowed to smoke out of doors, had to sit on an old molasses barrel, grimly contemplating the burnt ruin as he blamed Bevan for seducing Gideon to an alien trade.