"Then done wi' you, sir, an' thank 'ee. When be I to enter on my dooties?"
"At once."
"An' where, sir?"
"Here."
"Be you a-goin' to sleep the night in this moloncholy place?"
"Certainly."
"Very well, sir. Please yoursel', as Dick said to the press-gang. An' what be I to do fust?"
Mr. Fogo perhaps did not hear the question, for he was gazing out at the falling shadows: when he spoke again it was upon another subject.
"It is right that you should know," said he, "the kind of life you will be wanted to lead. In the first place, I am extraordinarily subject to fits of abstraction—absence of mind, in other words. It is an affection to which my style of life has made me particularly prone: it has led me before now into absurd, and sometimes into dangerous situations.
"I have heard tell," said Caleb, "of an old gentl'm'n as carefully tucked hes umbrella in bed an' put hissel' in the corner. Es that the style o' thing, sir?"