With the Marquess, who resembles an irritable baboon, I have little to do. The marchioness—a strong woman is also, mercifully, too much engaged upon works of supererogation, which, in a rich bass, she styles "her manifold duties," to observe my existence. Lord Pomfret Fresne, however, a gilded youth with three thousand a year, finds me extremely useful. I bet for him, I make appointments for him to have his hair trimmed, I retain stalls for him, and occasionally I admit him to the house at an unlawful hour. In fact, he is a confounded nuisance. He is impertinent, grossly ignorant, and a niggard. Moreover, Toby, he hath an eye whose like I have seen before—once. Then it was set in the head of a remount which, after it had broken a shoeing-smith's leg, was cast for vice at Kantara in 1917.
"Lyveden," says he one day, "you're a gentleman, aren't you?"
It seemed easiest to say "Yes."
"Why?" says his lordship.
"It's a family failing," said I.
"How beastly! You mean, like drink?"
"Exactly, my lord. We never mention it."
"No, don't," says he. "My mother's very hot on that sort of thing. Hullo!" He peers into a gold cigarette-case. "I had four pounds in here. I'll swear I had."
Considering that I had found the case in the library, and had restored it to him five minutes before, his ejaculation was not in the best of taste. His lordship, however, must whet his point upon the grindstone of insult.
"You're not hard up, are you?" says he.