“Is that so? Well, I'll be darned!” remarked Mr. Temple Barholm. He gave a moment to reflection, and then cheered up immensely.
“I'll tell you how we'll fix it. You come up into my room and bring your tatting or read a newspaper while I dress.” He openly chuckled. “Holy smoke! I've GOT to put on my shirt and swear at my collar-buttons myself. If I'm in for having a trained nurse do it for me, it'll give me the Willies. When you danced around me before dinner—”
Pearson's horror forced him to commit the indiscretion of interrupting.
“I hope I didn't DANCE, sir,” he implored. “I tried to be extremely quiet.”
“That was it,” said Tembarom. “I shouldn't have said danced; I meant crept. I kept thinking I should tread on you, and I got so nervous toward the end I thought I should just break down and sob on your bosom and beg to be taken back to home and mother.”
“I'm extremely sorry, sir, I am, indeed,” apologized Pearson, doing his best not to give way to hysterical giggling. How was a man to keep a decently straight face, and if one didn't, where would it end? One thing after another.
“It was not your fault. It was mine. I haven't a thing against you. You're a first-rate little chap.”
“I will try to be more satisfactory to-morrow.”
There must be no laughing aloud, even if one burst a blood-vessel. It would not do. Pearson hastily confronted a vision of a young footman or Mr. Burrill himself passing through the corridors on some errand and hearing master and valet shouting together in unseemly and wholly incomprehensible mirth. And the next remark was worse than ever.
“No, you won't, Pearson,” Mr. Temple Barholm asserted. “There's where you're wrong. I've got no more use for a valet than I have for a pair of straight-front corsets.”