“I suffer from my feet,” repeated the butler, measuring out the drops.  “You are a young man, Mr. Marson.  Probably you do not know what it is to suffer from your feet.”  He surveyed Ashe, his whisky toddy and the wall beyond him, with heavy-lidded inscrutability.  “Corns!” he said.

Ashe said he was sorry.

“I suffer extremely from my feet—­not only corns.  I have but recently recovered from an ingrowing toenail.  I suffered greatly from my ingrowing toenail.  I suffer from swollen joints.”

Ashe regarded this martyr with increasing disfavor.  It is the flaw in the character of many excessively healthy young men that, though kind-hearted enough in most respects, they listen with a regrettable feeling of impatience to the confessions of those less happily situated as regards the ills of the flesh.  Rightly or wrongly, they hold that these statements should be reserved for the ear of the medical profession, and other and more general topics selected for conversation with laymen.

“I’m sorry,” he said hastily.  “You must have had a bad time.  Is there a large house party here just now?”

“We are expecting,” said Mr. Beach, “a number of guests.  We shall in all probability sit down thirty or more to dinner.”

“A responsibility for you,” said Ashe ingratiatingly, well pleased to be quit of the feet topic.

Mr. Beach nodded.

“You are right, Mr. Marson.  Few persons realize the responsibilities of a man in my position.  Sometimes, I can assure you, it preys on my mind, and I suffer from nervous headaches.”

Ashe began to feel like a man trying to put out a fire which, as fast as he checks it at one point, breaks out at another.

“Sometimes when I come off duty everything gets blurred.  The outlines of objects grow indistinct and misty.  I have to sit down in a chair.  The pain is excruciating.”

“But it helps you to forget the pain in your feet.”

“No, no.  I suffer from my feet simultaneously.”

Ashe gave up the struggle.

“Tell me all about your feet,” he said.

And Mr. Beach told him all about his feet.

The pleasantest functions must come to an end, and the moment arrived when the final word on the subject of swollen joints was spoken.  Ashe, who had resigned himself to a permanent contemplation of the subject, could hardly believe he heard correctly when, at the end of some ten minutes, his companion changed the conversation.

“You have been with Mr. Peters some time, Mr. Marson?”

“Eh?  Oh!  Oh, no only since last Wednesday.”

“Indeed!  Might I inquire whom you assisted before that?”

For a moment Ashe did what he would not have believed himself capable of doing—­regretted that the topic of feet was no longer under discussion.  The question placed him in an awkward position.  If he lied and credited himself with a lengthy experience as a valet, he risked exposing himself.  If he told the truth and confessed that this was his maiden effort in the capacity of gentleman’s gentleman, what would the butler think?  There were objections to each course, but to tell the truth was the easier of the two; so he told it.