“Feelings, sir? What are those?” he asked. “I don’t somehow seem to know.”
“No matter. Under the circumstances it is, perhaps, as well you shouldn’t know. Now, I want to ask you a few questions, my old friend—and look here, I am going, first of all, to make you a little present.”
I slipped my fingers into my waistcoat pocket, produced a half-sovereign, and pressed it into the palm of his wrinkled old hand.
“To buy tobacco with—no, don’t thank me,” I said quickly, as he began to express gratitude. “Now, answer a few questions I am going to put to you. In the first place, how long have you been in Sir Charles’ service?”
“Sixteen years, come Michaelmas,” he answered promptly. “I came from Diss. I mind the time my father—”
“How did Sir Charles, or Mr Thorold as he was then, first hear of you?”
“He was in Downham Market. I was caretaker for the Reverend George Lattimer, and Sir Charles, I should say, Mr Thorold, came to see the house. I think he thought of buying it, but he didn’t buy it. I showed him into every room, I remember, and as he was leaving he put his hand into his pocket, pulled out a sov’rin’, and gave it to me, just as you have done. And then he said to me, he said: ‘Ole man,’ he said, ‘would you like a better job than this?’ Those were his very words, ‘Ole man, would you like a better job than this?’”
He grinned and chuckled at the reflection, showing his toothless gums.
“And then he took you into his service. Did you come to London at once?”
“Ay, next week he brought me up, and I’ve been here ever since—in this house ever since. The Reverend George Lattimer wor vexed with Sir Charles for a ‘stealing’ me from his service, as he said. I mind in Diss, when—”