Page:The City of Masks (1918).djvu/107

Rh was no one to say it to, he satisfied himself by condensing the lament into a strictly personal sigh.

He first resorted to the remark far back in the days when he was in the service of the Marquis of Camelford. If it wasn't one thing that was going wrong it was another; in any event it was "always something."

Prosperity and environment had not succeeded in bringing him to the point where he could snap his fingers and lightly say in the face of annoyances: "It's really nothing."

The fact that he was, after twenty-five years of ceaseless climbing, at the head of the well-known and thoroughly responsible house of Cricklewick, Stackable & Co., Linen Merchants and Drapers,—(he insisted on attaching the London word, not through sentiment, but for the sake of isolation),—operated not at all in bringing about a becalmed state of mind. Habitually he was disturbed by little things, which should not be in the least surprising when one stops to think of the multitudinous annoyances he must have experienced while managing the staff of under-servants in the extensive establishment of the late Marquis of Camelford.

He had never quite outgrown the temperament which makes for a good and dependable butler,—and that, in a way, accounts for the contention that "it is always something," and also for the excellent credit of the house he headed. Mr. Cricklewick made no effort to deceive himself. He occasionally deceived his wife in a mild and innocuous fashion by secretly reverting to form, but not for an instant did he deceive himself. He was a butler and he always would be a butler, despite the fact that the business and a certain section