"Calls master 'Dick,'" said the footman.
"Sez 'e's an old friend," murmured the cook.
They looked at each other, and the thought in every mind was the same. The servants were one and all anxious to hear the genesis of their late master, who had dropped into the Moat House, as from the skies, some five years before. Mrs. Crammer, the cook, rose to the occasion with a curtsy.
"I'm sure, sir, I'm sorry the master ain't here to see you," she said, polishing a chair with her apron. "But as you says--or as I take it you means--'e's gone where we must all go. Take a seat, sir, and I'll tell Joe, who's in the library."
"Joe--my old friend Joe!" said Cicero, sitting down like a mountain. "Ah! the faithful fellow!"
This random remark brought forth information, which was Cicero's intention in making it.
"Faithful!" growled the coachman, "an' why not? Joe Brill was paid higher nor any of us, he was; just as of living all his life with an iceberg deserved it!"
"Poor Dick was an iceberg!" sighed Cicero pensively. "A cold, secretive man."
"Ah!" said Mrs. Crammer, wiping her eye, "you may well say that. He 'ad secrets, I'm sure, and guilty ones, too!"
"We all have our skeletons, ma'am. But would you mind giving me something to eat and to drink? for I have walked a long way. I am too poor," said Cicero, with a sweet smile, "to ride, as in the days of my infancy, but spero meliora."