"
"Yes, there's that," admitted Lemuel. "I've worried a good deal
about that, for I've had to take a servant's place in a good many
things, and I've thought folks looked down on me for it, even when
they didn't seem to intend to do it. But I guess it isn't so bad as
I thought when I first began to notice it. Do you suppose it is?"
His voice was suddenly tense with personal interest in the question
which had ceased to be abstract.
"Oh, certainly not," said the minister, with an ease which he did
not feel.
"I presume I had what you may call a servant's place at Miss
Vane's," pursued Lemuel unflinchingly, "and I've been what you may
call head waiter at the St. Albans, since I've been there. If a
person heard afterwards, when I had made out something, if I ever
did, that I had been a servant, would they--they--despise me for
it?"
"Not unless they were very silly people," said Sewell cordially, "I
can assure you."
"But if they had ever seen me doing a servant's work, wouldn't they
always remember it, no matter what I was afterwards?" Sewell
hesitated, and Lemuel hurried to add, "I ask because I've made up my
mind not to be anything but clerk after this."
Sewell pitied the simple shame, the simple pride. "That isn't the
question for you to ask, my dear boy," he answered gently, and with
an affection which he had never felt for his charge before.
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