“It’s a very awkward and responsible position that I have taken upon myself, in undertaking to keep an insane person under my own roof,” pursued John Bradfield. “The expense is nothing to me, and, of course, I don’t mind the danger to myself. His father was a very valued servant of mine, and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for his son. I could never have borne to see the boy taken away to a pauper lunatic asylum.”
He paused, and seemed to expect some comment. So Stelfox said:
“I understand, sir; I quite understand.”
But he looked as if he did not.
“And the hard part of it is,” went on Mr. Bradfield, in a loud, aggrieved tone of voice, “that if some friend, say, of his father’s, were to turn up now, and want to see him, ten to one he’d think I ought to have treated the lad differently, put him into an asylum, or done something or other that I haven’t done.”
Again he paused. Stelfox, still stolid, still apparently without vivid interest, said:
“No doubt, sir.”
Mr. Bradfield would have given anything to know exactly what was passing in the man’s mind. Stelfox would have given anything to know what was passing in his master’s.
Mr. Bradfield, impatient, turned on his heel, and began rummaging among the letters the post had brought, tossing on to his secretary’s already well-covered table all those directed in handwritings he did not know, and opening the rest, only to throw them for the most part, half-read, into the waste-paper basket.
“However,” he went on, still reading, “I have the satisfaction of knowing I have done my best for the lad. And so have you, Stelfox. And I may as well take this opportunity of telling you that you will start the New Year with new wages. No objection to another ten pounds a year, I suppose?”