to order, how to order it; nor had her lord
and master forgotten his cunning as to the
wine. Of the latter there was plenty without
profusion. Very soon after dinner was
finished Mrs. Skeeme left us to ourselves, and
then commenced the conversation which I had
sought for.

"And so you want something to do," said
Skeeme. "I have been thinking over what
little you told me, and have hit upon a plan
which I think will assist you, only you must
not be offended if I offer you what might
appear strange with reference to the former
position in which you knew me."

I replied that I would be only too glad
if anything I could get to do would give me
bread and cheese.

"Would you mind," said Skeeme, "serving
under me? I ask you this before going further
or saying more, as I will not make you the
offer I am going to unless I see clearly that
you do not object to being nominally, as it
were, in my service."

"Not in the very least," I answered. "I
would much rather serve you than any man I
don't know, and very much rather than with
many whom I do know. What is it you
propose?"

"My idea is that you should become my
private secretary—that is, nominally. You will
have to attend every day at the Great Southern
Railway, of which I am chairman, and work
there in my private room. Your salary will
be two hundred pounds a year, which will be
nominally paid you by me, but really by the
company." (This, I afterwards found out, was a
pious fraud of my worthy old friend's, who really
paid me out of his own pocket.) "You will
have a good deal to do, for as (this between
ourselves) I fully expect to get into parliament
in a few weeks, I shall have much less
time than at present to attend to my own
business. My private correspondence, and all
that, will be in your hands. The salary is
small, but if you pay attention to what is passing
around you in the railway and finance world,
you will very soon be able to pick up wrinkles
by which a few pounds can be turned, and I
need hardly say that any way I can help you
in this, I will gladly do so. And now we'll
go to coffee."

Nothing connected with Skeeme and his rise,
fall, and rise again in fortune, surprised me
more than the way in which his manners had
kept pace with his advancement in life. With
the exception of certain liberties he still took
with the poor letter H, there was hardly
anything about him that reminded me of the old
times when he was a lacquey. That he should
dress well and quietly, or that he should behave
at table as if he had moved in the best society
from the day he left school, were acquirements
which a keen, quick-witted man, could hardly
have failed to pick up during his years of
valetdom. But what did astonish me was the
total change in his manners, formerly he was
at all times and in all places the same staid,
steady, slow-speaking upper-servant—perfectly
civil, knowing his own place, and yet having a
due quantity of self-respect, but still a servant
in looks and in speech. In the City he was the
hurried, bustling man of business, who either
never has, or never allows that he has, time
enough to get through all his work. But at
home he had all the ways of a well-to-do
gentleman, whose greatest labour was to shoot
partridges, ride to hounds, go over his agent's
accounts, or, if in London, walk to White's,
and there pass away an hour with the Times
or Post.

Mr. Skeeme had, however, one great advantage
, or "pull," as it is vulgarly called, over
others who had risen from the lower ranks to a
place in "society," which was, that so many
years had elapsed since he was a valet, hardly
any one remembered him in that capacity.
London has this, if it has no other, advantage
over the rest of the world, namely, few people
know, and still fewer care, who their neighbour
is, where he is going, or whence he came.
Twenty years ago in London! Who cares to
ask or to know what you or I were doing half
that time past? Skeeme had the advantage of
this. In Liverpool, or Manchester, or Bristol,
he would have been spoken of to the day of
his death, if he had lived to fourscore, as the
rich man who was once a gentleman's valet.
In London, few ask what a man has been,
all they care to know is what he is, especially
if he be a director of several companies,
a great authority on finance and railways, and
spoken of as likely to be soon in parliament,
promoter of some "General and Universal
Confidence Company, Limited," or chairman of a
"Universal Discount," or "Great Southern
Railway Company." If by chance any one
asked the question as to where or how he had
taken his rise, the answer was that he had
been many years "something in the City;—a
discount agent, they believed, but were not
sure."

About a week after dining at Mr. Skeeme's,
I took up my appointment as private secretary
to that gentleman. My duties consisted in
being at the office of the Great Southern Railway
every morning soon after ten, when I had
to open each letter received for the great Mr.
Skeeme, mark down in a book from whom it
came, draw up a précis of the contents of each,
and be ready to take my chief's directions as to
what reply was to be sent to each communication.
Some letters I answered in my own name,
others I took to Mr. Skeeme to sign, and the
more particular ones—from bankers, great City
men, lords, members of parliament, and other
persons of standing—my chief would reply to
in his own hand; although I generally drafted
even the commonest notes. There was one thing
in which Skeeme had not risen with his circumstances:
he wrote, as he always had done, a
very good hand, but his mode of expressing
himself was anything but clear, and his spelling
was eccentric. The few letters or notes that
he penned himself, were written in a room next