“Now wait a minute, wait a minute,” he added, “don’t be in a hurry. I always give a tip to taxi drivers—I really don’t know why,” he said with a sudden change of expression, “there’s no particular favour, and they earn lots of money. But one’s got to—I suppose if one didn’t,” he continued in a ruminative tone, “they’d mark one in some way, same way they do the boxes in hotels, and your watch, me boy, when you pawn it,” he ended with an explosion of mirth, digging the man sharply in the ribs. “Eh?” He pulled out two pence, added another penny, and then another, took out a sixpence, put it back again, finally put the three pence into the man’s hand, and went up to his door.
The taxi-man as he was driving off nodded familiarly to a policeman, and, by drawing up all one side of his face while he left the other in repose, gave it to be understood that he had grave doubts of the mental balance of the gentleman whom he had just conveyed to his residence.
Alas, for simple men! The policeman strode up to him, rated him soundly, asked what he meant by it, and in general gave him to understand that he was dealing with no ordinary household. And the taxi-man, who was but recently landed from the sea, went off pondering, as far as the congested traffic would allow him, upon the mysteries of London.
The policeman solemnly returned to his duty, which was that of guarding the residence of so great a citizen, and Sir Charles, putting his hat upon the table in the hall, went past the two servants upon whose presence in that vestibule he insisted, and walked majestically up the staircase, as though the last half-hour had not been.
But he felt during this progress unaccountable desires. Before he was half-way up they were too strong for him. He stopped, leaned over the bannisters, looked at the two well-trained domestics who stood like statues below him, and said: “Henry!”
Henry, with a perfect turn of the head, answered, “Yes, Sir Charles?”
“William!”
William, with a precisely similar change of attitude, said, “Yes, Sir Charles?”
“What does it feel like to stand like that when another man, who simply happens to be richer than you, is going by?”
The well-trained domestics made no reply.