It did not seem to be so much a request as a resolution;
but Lemuel willingly assented. Mrs. Harmon's nephew said that so
long as they did not want him to do it he did not care who did it;
and if a few of them had his furnace to look after they would not be
so anxious to kick.
XVI
Lemuel had to be up early in the morning to get the bills of fare,
which Mrs. Harmon called the Meanyous, written in time for the seven
o'clock breakfasters; and after opening the dining-room doors with
fit ceremony, he had to run backward and forward to answer the rings
at the elevator, and to pull out the chairs for the ladies at the
table, and slip them back under them as they sat down. The ladies at
the St. Albans expected to get their money's worth; but their
exactions in most things were of use to Lemuel. He grew constantly
nimbler of hand and foot under them, and he grew quicker-witted; he
ceased to hulk in mind and body. He did not employ this new mental
agility in devising excuses and delays; he left that to Mrs. Harmon,
whose conscience was easy in it; but from seven o'clock in the
morning till eleven at night, when the ladies came in from the
theatre, he was so promptly, so comfortingly at their service, that
they all said they did not see how they had ever got along without
him.
His activities took the form of interruptions rather than constant
occupation, and he found a good deal of broken-up time on his hands,
which he passed in reading, and in reveries of Statira.
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