ontest, for he would soon be toppled over). He has
a light nature, which would enable him to bob up cheerily in new
conditions and return unaltered to the old ones. His selfishness is his
most endearing quality. If he has his way he will spend his life like a
cat in pushing his betters out of the soft places, and until he is old
he will be fondled in the process.

He gives his hat to one footman and his cane to another, and mounts the
great staircase unassisted and undirected. As a nephew of the house he
need show no credentials even to Crichton, who is guarding a door above.

It would not be good taste to describe Crichton, who is only a servant;
if to the scandal of all good houses he is to stand out as a figure in
the play, he must do it on his own, as they say in the pantry and the
boudoir.

We are not going to help him. We have had misgivings ever since we found
his name in the title, and we shall keep him out of his rights as long
as we can. Even though we softened to him he would not be a hero in
these clothes of servitude; and he loves his clothes. How to get him out
of them? It would require a cataclysm. To be an indoor servant at all
is to Crichton a badge of honour; to be a butler at thirty is the
realisation of his proudest ambitions. He is devotedly attached to his
master, who, in his opinion, has but one fault, he is not sufficiently
contemptuous of his inferiors. We are immediately to be introduced to
this solitary failing of a great English peer.

This perfect butler, then, opens a door, and ushers Ernest into a
certain room. At the same moment the curtain rises on this room, and the
play begins.

It is one of several reception-rooms in Loam House, not the most
magnificent but quite the softest; and of a warm afternoon all that
those who are anybody crave for is the softest. The larger rooms are
magnificent and bare, carpetless, so that it is an accomplishment
to keep one's feet on them; they are sometimes lent for charitable
purposes; they are also all in use on the night of a dinner-party, when
you may find yourself alone in one, having taken a wrong turning; or
alone, save for two others who are within hailing distance.

This room, however, is comparatively small and very soft. There are
so many cushions in it that you wonder why, if you are an outsider and
don't know that, it needs six cushions to make one fair head comfy. The
couches themselves are cushions as large as beds, and there is an ar