"I daresay Mr. Ashley is very much upset by the suspicion attaching to his brother," Mr. Tracy said, as he attacked a second kidney.
"I don't doubt he is," Jervis replied, "but he's not the sort of gentleman to show it."
"Not given to showing his feelings, you mean," said the lawyer; "his uncle, Sir Geoffrey Holt, was just like that. But it doesn't follow that those very self-possessed people feel things less than the others do. You don't agree with me, eh?" for Jervis looked doubtful.
"I don't think Mr. Ashley minds things as much as I should if I were in his place," the valet answered; "that is to say, not some things."
"Little things, perhaps," Mr. Tracy suggested.
"Well, not what I should call little things," said Jervis, who was by no means disinclined to criticise one of his gentlemen, as he termed the several tenants of the chambers whom he had the privilege of valeting. "For instance, if his breakfast don't please him, or his boots don't shine enough, you'd think the house was on fire by the way he rings the bell, but in what I should call vexations he doesn't even begin to seem worried, when I should be off my head with scheming and devising."
Mr. Tracy laughed.
"To have the power of not being worried by worries must be a great blessing sometimes, but the word has such different meanings for different people. A man like Mr. Ashley, with comfortable quarters and first-class attendance, and well-to-do people belonging to him, can't have real anxieties."
"I don't know about all that," Jervis said sententiously. "Nobody can see very far into anybody else's life. What I should be rich on, Mr. Ashley may be poor on, but I've known lots of times when he's been in difficulties, so to speak, and never turned a hair. Those are poached eggs on spinach, sir."
"Thanks, I'll take some," said Mr. Tracy, who would have gone on eating until dinner-time if only so he could have prolonged the conversation; "but what do you mean by difficulties?"