‘That is a vife-bound node,’ said Darco. ‘Co to your lotchings and bay your pill. I shall stop it out of your zalery. Then you will gome to me at this attress.’ He gave minute directions about omnibuses green and red and yellow, and all these Paul stored away in his memory as well as he could. ‘Now, berhabs,’ said his employer, ‘you think I am a vool to gif you a vife-bound node. But if you are not honest I shall be rit of you jeaply, and I shall know at vonce.’
Paul fired a little at this.
‘If you don’t think I am to be trusted you had better not employ me.’
‘That is all right,’ said Darco. ‘I am Cheorge Dargo. I do things my own vay. Look here. Are you vond of imidading beobles?’
‘No,’ said Paul; ‘not that I know of.’
‘Don’t pegin on me,’ said Darco. ‘There is everypody thinks he gan imidade me. All the beobles in all my gombanies dry it on. But bevore you can imidade a man he must haf zome beguliaridies. Now, I hafen’t got any beguliaridies, and zo it’s no good drying to imidade me.’
They parted at the London terminus. Paul made his way to Charterhouse Square, where he was received with marked disfavour. He paid his bill, packed his trunk—a small affair which he could shoulder easily—and set put for Darco’s house. It was a little house, but it stood by itself in a very trim garden, and it was furnished in a style which made Paul gasp. He had been very poorly bred, and he had never had access to such a place in all his life before. The bevelled Venetian mirrors in their gilded frames, the rose-coloured blinds, the rich brocades and glittering gilding of the chairs, the Chinese dragons in porcelain, the very tongs and poker and fire-shovel of cut brass, astonished him. He thought that his employer must be a Croesus. This faith was confirmed when he was called into the library, where there was a wealth of books, nobly bound.
‘That gollection,’ said Darco, ‘gost me two thousand bounds. I am still adding to it. Here is an original Bigvig, the Bigvig of Jarles Tickens, with all the green covers bound with it up. Here is “Ton Quigsotte,” the first etition in Sbanish. Here is the “Dreacle Piple,” berfect, from tidel page to the last line of Revelations. Here is efery blay-pill that has ever been issued at Her Majesty’s Theatre from the time it vas opened until now.’ He patted and fondled his treasure with a smiling pride and affection. ‘They are not to be touched,’ he said, ‘on any bretext. Nopoty stobs in my house a minute who touches my books. I am Cheorge Dargo, ant ven I zay a thing I mean it’ He pointed to a door. ‘Through that,’ he said, ‘is a lafadory. You can vash your hands and gome and haf lunge.’
Paul obeyed, and at the luncheon-table was introduced to Mrs. Darco, a lean brunette, who by way of establishing her own dignity was sulkily disdainful of the newcomer. He was glad to escape into the library, where Darco set him to work on more correspondence—an endless whirl of it, diversified with family skirmishes.
‘Now, who the tevil has been mettling again with my babers? I haf dolt eferybody I will not haf my babers mettled.’ Then a dash to the door, and an inquiry trumpeted up the stairway. ‘Who the tevil has been mettling with my babers?’