“But if they had ever seen me doing a servant's work, wouldn't they always remember it, no matter what I was afterwards?” Sewell hesitated, and Lemuel hurried to add, “I ask because I've made up my mind not to be anything but clerk after this.”
Sewell pitied the simple shame, the simple pride. “That isn't the question for you to ask, my dear boy,” he answered gently, and with an affection which he had never felt for his charge before. “There's another question, more important, and one which you must ask yourself: 'Should I care if they did?' After all, the matter's in your own hands. Your soul's always your own till you do something wrong.”
“Yes, I understand that.” Lemuel sat silently thoughtful, fingering his hat-band. It seemed to Sewell that he wished to ask something else, and was mustering his courage; but if this was so, it exhaled in a sigh, and he remained silent.
“I should be sorry,” pursued the minister, “to have you dwell upon such things. There are certain ignoble facts in life which we can best combat by ignoring them. A slight of almost any sort ceases to be when you cease to consider it.” This did not strike Sewell as wholly true when he had said it, and he was formulating some modification of it in his mind, when Lemuel said—
“I presume a person can help himself some by being ashamed of caring for such things, and that's what I've tried to do.”
“Yes, that's what I meant——”
“I guess I've exaggerated the whole thing some. But if a thing is so, thinking it ain't won't unmake it.”
“No,” admitted Sewell reluctantly. “But I should be sorry, all the same, if you let it annoy—grieve you. What has pleased me in what I've been able to observe in you, has been your willingness to take hold of any kind of honest work. I liked finding you with your coat off washing dishes, that morning, at the Wayfarer's Lodge, and I liked your going at once to Miss Vane's in a—as you did——”
“Of course,” Lemuel interrupted, “I could do it before I knew how it was looked at here.”
“And couldn't you do it now?”