Colonel Pallinder, however, never went to his office until ten o'clock in the morning, and might be seen posting home any day at about half-past three in the afternoon--"after banking-hours," he used to explain, when one met him; "there's really nothing to be done--nothing, in _my_ office, at any rate." And his gesture somehow indicated wider horizons than ours and a vista of great affairs. For all that, he had no appearance of a man harried by cares; and it may be, too, that his home was not quite so quiet and restful as it was represented. "I understand that Mrs. Pallinder is trying again to get a maid for her mother," said Doctor Vardaman, half thinking aloud, half speaking to Huddesley as the latter brought him the morning paper, in company with his breakfast on the old silver-plated tray with which a previous generation of Vardamans had been served; the copper of its foundation showed through here and there under Huddesley's vigorous care; the delicate etched arabesque around the heraldic device and motto in the centre were almost worn away. Doctor Vardaman liked to fancy he could see his mother's thin, fine hands fluttering about above the cups and saucers on this tray; she, too, had had a habit of harmless and somehow perfectly dignified familiarity with her staid old servants over this one meal. The doctor opened his paper, turning at once--as everybody invariably does--to a certain concise, ominous column in the lower left-hand corner of the inside page where might be read, framed in undertakers' advertisements, and notices that So-and-So's mortuary sculptures were the best in the market, the names of yesterday's dead. Close by, another column offered you a list of marriage-licenses with a fine indifference to the fitness of things; and not far away appeared the "Help wanted--Male--Female." "I see Mrs. Pallinder's advertising for a maid," said the doctor. "And here, in another place, she wants a cook, too. She's had a great deal of trouble with servants this winter. There's a pair of us--_arcades ambo!_" He grinned into his coffee-cup. "Only I'm very well-off now at least. This coffee's very fine, Huddesley. It's a pity Mrs. Pallinder's having such a time." "Yes, sir," said Huddesley respectfully. "That kind generally does have trouble, sir." He caught the doctor's eye and coughed discreetly. "The house is large and there must be a great deal of work," said the doctor, considering with vast satisfaction how comfortable he was in his little den. "Nobody minds doin' work that 'e's paid for, Hi've noticed," said Huddesley. "It's when you 'ave trouble colleckin' wages that you're liable to break hoff relations haltogether--speakin', hof course, sir, as a man in my position, not as a gentleman in yours." "The deuce!" ejaculated Doctor Vardaman inwardly. "Is _that_ it? Well, I don't know why I'm surprised--I might have suspected as much--in fact, I _have_ suspected as much off and on."