"I know you have been very generous to me," I said, penitently; "but a kindness becomes none when you are upbraided with it."
"So say the copybooks--I deny it. At all events, I'll say no more; and you shall sit down there, and write as still as a mouse till two, while I tackle this never-to-be-enough-by-unhappy-third-years'-men-execrated Griffin's Optics."
At four that afternoon, I knocked, proofs in hand, at the door of Lord Lynedale's rooms in the King's Parade. The door was opened by a little elderly groom, grey-coated, grey-gaitered, grey-haired, grey-visaged. He had the look of a respectable old family retainer, and his exquisitely neat groom's dress gave him a sort of interest in my eyes. Class costumes, relics though they are of feudalism, carry a charm with them. They are symbolic, definitive; they bestow a personality on the wearer, which satisfies the mind, by enabling it instantly to classify him, to connect him with a thousand stories and associations; and to my young mind, the wiry, shrewd, honest, grim old serving-man seemed the incarnation of all the wonders of Newmarket, and the hunting-kennel, and the steeple-chase, of which I had read, with alternate admiration and contempt, in the newspapers. He ushered me in with a good breeding which surprised me;--without insolence to me, or servility to his master; both of which I had been taught to expect.