"Thank you; I'll go to my room at once," I said.
"You'll find a fire there, I know. Having no regiment now, I look after my servants. Mind you make use of them. I can't find enough of work for them."
He left me, and again addressed the youth, who had by this time got out of his great-coat, and, cold as it was, stood looking at his hands by the hall-lamp. As I moved away, I heard him say, in a careless tone,
"And how's Adela, uncle?"
The reply did not reach me, but I knew now who the young fellow was.
Hearing a kind of human grunt behind me, I turned and saw that I was followed by the butler; and, by a kind of intuition, I knew that this grunt was a remark, an inarticulate one, true, but not the less to the point on that account. I knew that he had been in the dining-room by the pop I had heard; and I knew by the grunt that he had heard his master's observation about his servants.
"Come, Beeves," I said, "I don't want your help. You've got plenty to do, you know, at dinner-time; and your master is rather hard upon you—isn't he?"
I knew the man, of course.
"Well, Mr. Smith, master is the best master in the country, he is. But he don't know what work is, he don't."
"Well, go to your work, and never mind me. I know every turn in the house as well as yourself, Beeves."