Peter made a murmur supposed to acknowledge the correctness of this view.
Eventually the old Captain drew out his drawer of manuscript, stood fumbling with it uncertainly. Now and then he glanced at Peter, a genuine secretary who stood ready to help him in his undertaking. The old gentleman picked up some sheets of his manuscript, seemed about to read them aloud, but after a moment shook his head, and said, "No, we'll do that to-night," and restored them to their places. Finally he turned to his helper.
"Now, Peter," he explained, "in doing this work, I always write at night. It's quieter then,—less distraction. My mornings I spend downtown in conversation with my friends. If you should need me, Peter, you can walk down and find me in front of the livery-stable. I sit there for a while each morning."
The gravity with which he gave this schedule of his personal habits amused Peter, who bowed with a serious, "Very well, Captain."
"And in the meantime," pursued the old man, looking vaguely about the room, "you will do well to familiarize yourself with my library in order that you may be properly qualified for your secretarial labors."
Peter agreed again.
"And now if you will get my hat and coat, I will be off and let you go to work," concluded the Captain, with an air of continued urgency.
Peter became thoroughly amused at such an outcome of the old gentleman's headlong attack on his work,—a stroll down to the village to hold conversation with friends. The mulatto walked unsmilingly to a little closet where the Captain hung his things. He took down the old gentleman's tall hat, a gray greatcoat worn shiny about the shoulders and tail, and a finely carved walnut cane. Some reminiscence of the manners of butlers which Peter had seen in theaters caused him to swing the overcoat across his left arm and polish the thin nap of the old hat with his right sleeve. He presented it to his employer with a certain duplication of a butler's obsequiousness. He offered the overcoat to the old gentleman's arms with the same air. Then he held up the collar of the greatcoat with one hand and with the other reached under its skirts, and drew down the Captain's long day coat with little jerks, as if he were going through a ritual.
Peter grew more and more hilarious over his barber's manners. It was his contribution to the old gentleman's literary labors, and he was doing it beautifully, so he thought. He was just making some minute adjustments of the collar when, to his amazement, Captain Renfrew turned on him.
"Damn it, sir!" he flared out. "What do you think you are? I didn't engage you for a kowtowing valet in waiting, sir! I asked you, sir, to come under my roof as an intellectual co-worker, as one gentleman asks another, and here you are making these niggery motions! They are disgusting! They are defiling! They are beneath the dignity of one gentleman to another, sir! What makes it more degrading, I perceive by your mannerism that you assume a specious servility, sir, as if you would flatter me by it!"