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Updated: May 18, 2025
An austere ex-butler, who let lodgings in Ebury Street and preached on Sundays in Hyde Park, he looked askance at the 'movies'. It was his boast that he had never been inside a theatre in his life, and he classed cinema palaces with theatres as wiles of the devil.
"I am curious," she said, smiling "very curious. Sir Wilfrid, for instance, talks of going down to stay with you?" "Why not? He'd come off extremely well. There's an ex-butler, and an ex-cook of Chudleigh's settled in the village. When I have a visitor, they come in and take possession. We live like fighting-cocks." "So nobody knows that, in general, you live like a workman?"
She put the keys in the Butler's hand, and if he asked for money she gave it. But one person is of one disposition and another is of another disposition." "That is true," replies the ex-butler, "but the sahebs are better than the mem sahebs. The sahebs are hot and get angry sometimes, but under them a man can live and eat a mouthful of bread.
"He was always fond of his jest," commented Mrs. Higgs. "That he were!" observed her lord. But it was after he went into the diplomatic service that the real trouble began. "It seems, sir, that he went the pace extraordinary," said the ex-butler, with a solemn gusto. "His debts were somethink awful," said the lady's-maid. "And as nice a young gentleman all the time as you would wish to see!"
But the motive of the crime was to be found in Norman's past, and Mrs. Krill knew all about this. Therefore, Paul was very pleased when he found that Mrs. Krill and her daughter were the guests at the little dinner. Hay's rooms were large and luxuriously furnished. In effect, he occupied a small flat in the house of an ex-butler, and had furnished the place himself in a Sybarite fashion.
So far as my memory serves me, there were no other pictures in this exclusive hostelry; and I was not surprised to learn that the landlord was an ex-butler, the landlady an ex-lady's-maid, from the great house; and that the bar-parlour was a sort of perquisite of former servants.
As he sits with his unemployed friends seeking the consolation of the never-failing beeree, the ex-butler narrates her ladyship's cantankerous ways, how she eternally fidgeted over a little harmless dust about the corners of the furniture, as if it was not the nature of dust to settle on furniture; how she would have window panes washed which had never been washed before; her meanness in inquiring about the consumption of oil and milk and firewood, matters which the saheb had never stooped to look into; and her unworthy and insulting practice of locking up stores, and doling them out day by day, not to mention having the cow milked in her presence: all which made him so ashamed in the presence of the other servants that his life became bitter, and he was forced to ask for his ruzza.
Sleuth, pushing suddenly forward, began walking up the flagged path, when, with a "By your leave, sir," the ex-butler, stepping aside, slipped in front of his lodger, in order to open the front door for him. As he passed by Mr.
Henry in "the 'unting-field," with a vast elaboration of painful circumstance, and buried him in the midst of a whole sorrowing county, before I could so much as manage to bring upon the stage my intimate friend, Mr. Norris. At the name the ex-butler grew diplomatic, and the ex-lady's-maid tender.
Then I knew I was face to face with the real householder, and it flashed on me that I had been indiscreet in taking service as his butler, and that I knew the face his ex-butler wore. And, being by this time awake to the responsibilities of the post, I quitted it three steps at a time, not once looking behind me.
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