“But what for?” he said. “Wages?”
“No, Sir John. You’re a good master, and her ladyship was a good mistress before she was took up to heaven.”
“Hush, man, hush!” he says sharply.
“And it’ll break my heart nearly not to see young Master Barclay when he comes back from school.”
“Then why do you want to go?”
“Well, Sir John, a good home and good food and good treatment’s right enough; but I don’t want to be found some morning a-weltering in my gore.”
“Now, look here, James Burdon,” he says, laughing. “I trust you with the keys of the wine-cellar, and you’ve been at the sherry.”
“You know better than that, Sir John. No, sir. You said that gold plate was an incubus, and such it is, for it’s always a-sitting on me, so as I can’t sleep o’ nights. It’s killing me, that’s what it is. Some night I shall be murdered, and all that plate taken away. It ain’t safe, and it’s cruel to a man to ask him to take charge of it.”
He did not speak for a few minutes.
“What am I to do, then, Burdon?”