‘You know me,’ he said; ‘Homer Sivewright, Cedar House. You can take out a summons if you fancy you’re badly treated. You’ve jerked a great deal more than eighteenpence out of my constitution.’ The cabman vanished in the fog, grumbling but acquiescent. ‘At seventy and upwards,’ said Mr. Sivewright to Lucius, ‘the human economy will hardly bear shaking. I shall walk home.’ He seemed feeble, somewhat uncertain upon his legs; and Lucius’s humanity came to the rescue. ‘Take my arm as far as your house,’ he said; ‘my time is not especially valuable.’ ‘Isn’t it?’ demanded the old man, looking at him suspiciously; ‘a young man about London whose time is of no use to him is in a bad road.’ ‘I didn’t say my time was of no use to me. Perhaps there are not many men in London who work harder than I. Only, as I take no pleasure, I have sometimes a margin left after work. I can spare half-an-hour just now, and if you like to lean on my arm it is at your service.’ ‘I accept your friendly offer. You speak like a gentleman and an honest man. My house is not half a mile from here; you must know it if you know this neighbourhood—Cedar House.’ ‘I think I do. A curious old house, belonging evidently to two periods, half stone, half brick, standing back from the road behind a heavily-buttressed wall. Is that it?’ ‘Yes. It was once a palace or a royal hunting-lodge, or whatever you like to call it. It was afterwards enlarged, in the reign of Anne, and became a wealthy citizen’s country seat, before there were all these abominations of factories and ropewalks and docks between the City and the eastern suburbs. I got the place for an almost nominal rent, and it suits me, as an empty hogshead would suit a mouse—plenty of room to turn round in it.’ ‘The house looks very large, but your family is large, no doubt.’ ‘My family consists of myself and my granddaughter, with two old servants,—trustworthy, of course. That is to say, they have learned by experience exactly to what extent they may safely rob me.’ They were walking in an eastward direction as they talked; the old man leaning somewhat heavily on the younger. Lucius laughed pleasantly at his companion’s cynicism. ‘Then you don’t believe even in the honesty of faithful servants?’ ‘I believe in nothing that is not demonstrable by the rule of three. The fidelity of old servants is like the fidelity of your household cat—they are faithful to their places; the beds they have slept upon so many years; the fireside at which they have a snug corner where the east wind cannot touch their rheumatism.’ ‘Yet there are instances of something better than mere feline constancy. Sir Walter Scott’s servants, for instance, who put their shoulders to the wheel manfully when Fortune played their master false—the old butler turning scrub and jack-of-all-trades, the old coachman going to the plough-tail. There is something awful in the descent of a butler, too, like the downfall of an archbishop.’