Velvet had not had a guest in three weeks, and she had begun to suspect that the receiving-hall had forgotten how to be a receiving-hall at all, so she set about teaching it again with the Dovereach boy.
She had him stand on the carpet’s first square, where the pattern began, and she made him bow. He bowed very seriously, from the waist, with his slate held flat against his chest like a shield, and he came up again with the solemn face of a child who has been told a rule and intends to obey it to the letter. His feet did not reach the carpet’s edge. He had grown a little in the weeks since the stay, she thought, and then decided that he had not grown at all, only been made to stand up straighter by the cough.
“Good,” said Velvet. “Very good. That is a bow that could be shown in any hall in the seven cities. Your mother must be proud of you.”
“My mother is correct,” said Teodor. “She would say the bow was a little deep at the end.”
“Then your mother has never been taught by a Chamberlain of the first rank,” said Velvet, with enormous warmth, “which is her great misfortune, and our great good fortune, because it means I may teach you the things she has not. Now. Come here, child, and let me look at you. No, do not look at the floor. A courtier looks at the face…
