man of some ability, had not known Grandcourt for fifteen
years without learning what sort of measures were useless with him,
though what sort might be useful remained often dubious. In the
beginning of his career he held a fellowship, and was near taking
orders for the sake of a college living, but not being fond of that
prospect accepted instead the office of traveling companion to a
marquess, and afterward to young Grandcourt, who had lost his father
early, and who found Lush so convenient that he had allowed him to
become prime minister in all his more personal affairs. The habit of
fifteen years had made Grandcourt more and more in need of Lush's
handiness, and Lush more and more in need of the lazy luxury to which
his transactions on behalf of Grandcourt made no interruption worth
reckoning. I cannot say that the same lengthened habit had intensified
Grandcourt's want of respect for his companion since that want had been
absolute from the beginning, but it had confirmed his sense that he
might kick Lush if he chose--only he never did choose to kick any
animal, because the act of kicking is a compromising attitude, and a
gentleman's dogs should be kicked for him. He only said things which
might have exposed himself to be kicked if his confidant had been a man
of independent spirit. But what son of a vicar who has stinted his wife
and daughters of calico in order to send his male offspring to Oxford,
can keep an independent spirit when he is bent on dining with high
discrimination, riding good horses, living generally in the most
luxuriant honey-blossomed clover--and all without working? Mr. Lush had
passed for a scholar once, and had still a sense of scholarship when he
was not trying to remember much of it; but the bachelor's and other
arts which soften manners are a time-honored preparation for sinecures;
and Lush's present comfortable provision was as good a sinecure in not
requiring more than the odor of departed learning. He was not
unconscious of being held kickable, but he preferred counting that
estimate among the peculiarities of Grandcourt's character, which made
one of his incalculable moods or judgments as good as another. Since in
his own opinion he had never done a bad action, it did not seem
necessary to consider whether he should be likely to commit one if his
love of ease required it. Lush's love of ease was well-satisfied at
present, and if his puddings were rolled toward him in the dust, he
took t