Chivers clearly had to think a bit. “Well, sir, I’m not quite that. Whatever has there been to make me, sir?” he asked in dim extenuation.
“How in the world do I know? I mean to whom do you belong?”
Chivers seemed to scan impartially the whole field. “If you could just only tell me, sir! I quite seem to waste away—for someone to take an order of.”
Clement Yule, by this time, had become aware he was amusing. “Who pays your wages?”
“No one at all, sir,” said the old man very simply.
His friend, fumbling an instant in a waistcoat pocket, produced something that his hand, in obedience to a little peremptory gesture and by a trick of which he had unlearned, through scant custom, the neatness, though the propriety was instinctive, placed itself in a shy practical relation to. “Then there’s a sovereign. And I haven’t many!” the young man, turning away resignedly, threw after it.
Chivers, for an instant, intensely studied him. “Ah, then, shouldn’t it stay in the family?”
Clement Yule wheeled round, first struck, then, at the sight of the figure made by his companion in this offer, visibly touched. “I think it does, old boy.”
Chivers kept his eyes on him now. “I’ve served your house, sir.”
“How long?”