me_."

I bowed over my brandy.

"I am a scholar; yet I employed him to read aloud to me, and derived
pleasure from his intonation. I talk as a scholar; yet he learned
to answer me in language as precise as my own. My cast-off garments
fitted him not more irreproachably than did my amenities of manner.
Divest him of his tray, and you would find his mode of entering a
room hardly distinguishable from my own--the same urbanity, the same
alertness of carriage, the same superfine deference towards the weaker
sex. All--all my idiosyncrasies I saw reflected in this my mirror; and
can you doubt that I was gratified? He was my _alter ego_--which,
by the way, makes it the more extraordinary that it should have been
necessary to marry him to the cook."

"Look here," I broke in; "you want a butler."

"Oh, you really grasp that fact, do you?" he retorted.

"And you wish to get rid of me as soon as may be."

"I hope there is no impoliteness in complimenting you on your
discernment."

"Your two wishes," said I, "may be reconciled. Let me cease to be your
burglar, and let me continue here as your butler."

He leant back, spreading out the fingers of each hand as if the
table's edge was a harpsichord, and he stretching octaves upon it.

"Believe me," I went on, "you might do worse. I have been a demy of
Magdalen College, Oxford, in my time, and retain some Greek and Latin.
I'll undertake to read the Fathers with an accent that shall not
offend you. My knowledge of wine is none the worse for having been
cultivated in other men's cellars. Moreover, you shall engage the
ugliest cook in Christendom, so long as I'm your butler. I've taken a
liking to you--that's flat--and I apply for the post."

"I give forty pounds a year," said he.

"And I'm cheap at that price."

He filled up his glass, looking up at me while he did so with the air
of one digesting a problem. From first to last his face was grave as a
judge's.

"We are too impulsive, I think," was his answer, after a minute's
silence. "And your speech smacks of the amateur. You say, 'Let
me cease to be your burglar, and let me be your butler.' The mere
aspiration is respectable; but a man might as well say, 'Let me cease
to write poems; let me paint pictures.' And truly, sir, you impressed
me as no expert in your present trade, but a journeyman-housebreaker,
if I may say so."

"On the other hand," I argued, "consider the moderation of my demands;
that alone should convi