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.
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