CHAPTER 7: The Life Of A Great City.
And so a new life began for Cuthbert beneath the roof of his uncle.
He found favour in the sight of Martin Holt because of his unpretending ways, his willingness, nay, his eagerness to learn, his ready submission to the authority exercised by the master of the house upon all beneath his roof, and the absence of anything like presumption or superciliousness on his nephew's part on the score of his patrician birth on his father's side.

Trevlyn though he was, the lad conformed to all the ways and usages of the humbler Holts; and even Mistress Susan soon ceased to look sourly at him, for she found him as amenable to her authority as to that of Martin, and handy and helpful in a thousand little nameless ways.
He was immensely interested in everything about him.

He would as willingly sit and baste a capon on the spit as ramble abroad in the streets, if she would but answer his host of inquiries about London, its ways and its sights.

Mistress Susan was not above being open to the insidious flattery of being questioned and listened to; and to find herself regarded as an oracle of wisdom and a mine of information could not but be soothing to her vanity, little as she knew that she possessed her share of that common feminine failing.
Then Cuthbert was a warm appreciator of her culinary talents.

The poor boy, who had lived at the Gate House on the scantiest of commons, and had been kept to oaten bread and water sometimes for a week together for a trifling offence, felt indeed that he had come to a land of plenty when he sat down day after day to his uncle's well-spread table, and was urged to partake of all manner of dishes, the very name of which was unknown to him.