“Jervis? Saunders?” he said. “Yes, I suppose they do. I _hope_ they do, for we’re their life’s work, and if they take the interest in us that I presume they do, they ought to talk about us. I imagine Jervis discusses me now and then with his wife. I should think he does it affectionately, on the whole. I don’t know.... It’s one of the few things that are as mysterious as life and death. There are these people always about us--all day, all night. They’ve got eyes--I suppose they use them. But we’ve got no means of knowing what they think or what they know. I do know a lot--about other people. Jervis gives me the news while he’s shaving me. So I suppose I know nearly all he knows about other people. He knows I like to know, and it’s part of what he’s paid for. But as for what he knows about me”--Grimshaw waved his hand as if he were flicking cigarette-ash off his knee--“why, I know nothing about that. We never can; we never shall. But we never can and we never shall know what anyone in the world knows of us and thinks. You’ll find, as you go on, that you’ll never really know all that Pauline thinks of you--not quite all. I shall never really know all that you think about me. I suppose we’re as intimate as men can be in this world, aren’t we? Well! You’re probably at this very moment thinking something or other about me. Perhaps I’m boring you or irritating you, but you won’t tell me. And,” he added, fixing his eyes gently and amiably upon Dudley Leicester’s face, “you’ll never know all I know about you.” Dudley Leicester had become filled with an impetuous dread that he had “given himself away” by his questions. “Why I asked,” he said, and his eyes avoided Grimshaw’s glance, “is that the postman seems to have been talking to Saunders about Pauline.” Grimshaw started suddenly forward in his seat. “Oh,” Dudley Leicester said, “it’s only that I asked Saunders about a voice I had heard, and he said it was the postman asking when Pauline would be home, or how her mother was. Something of that soft. It seems rather impertinent of these chaps.” “It seems to me rather nice,” Grimshaw said, “if you look at it without prejudice. We may as well suppose that both Saunders and the postman are decent fellows, and Pauline is so noticeable and so nice that it’s only natural that an old servant and an old postman should be concerned if she’s upset. After all, you know we do live in a village, and if we don’t do any harm, I don’t see why we should take it for granted that these people crab us. You’ve got to be talked about, old man, simply because you’re there. Everyone is talked about--all of us.” Dudley Leicester said, with a sudden and hot gloom: “There’s nothing about me to talk about. I’ve never wanted to be an interesting chap, and I never have been. I shall give Saunders the sack and report the postman.”