‘As Mr. Powl’s Viscount?’ said I, laughing.  ’Oh, keep your mind easy, Mr. Rowley’s is every bit as good.  Only, you see, as I am of the younger line, I bear my Christian name along with the title.  Alain is the Viscount; I am the Viscount Anne.  And in giving me the name of Mr. Anne, I assure you you will be quite regular.’

‘Yes, Mr. Anne,’ said the docile youth.  ’But about the shaving, sir, you need be under no alarm.  Mr. Powl says I ’ave excellent dispositions.’

‘Mr. Powl?’ said I.  ’That doesn’t seem to me very like a French name.’

‘No, sir, indeed, my lord,’ said he, with a burst of confidence.  ’No, indeed, Mr. Anne, and it do not surely.  I should say now, it was more like Mr. Pole.’

‘And Mr. Powl is the Viscount’s man?’

‘Yes, Mr. Anne,’ said he.  ’He ’ave a hard billet, he do.  The Viscount is a very particular gentleman.  I don’t think as you’ll be, Mr. Anne?’ he added, with a confidential smile in the mirror.

He was about sixteen, well set up, with a pleasant, merry, freckled face, and a pair of dancing eyes.  There was an air at once deprecatory and insinuating about the rascal that I thought I recognised.  There came to me from my own boyhood memories of certain passionate admirations long passed away, and the objects of them long ago discredited or dead.  I remembered how anxious I had been to serve those fleeting heroes, how readily I told myself I would have died for them, how much greater and handsomer than life they had appeared.  And looking in the mirror, it seemed to me that I read the face of Rowley, like an echo or a ghost, by the light of my own youth.  I have always contended (somewhat against the opinion of my friends) that I am first of all an economist; and the last thing that I would care to throw away is that very valuable piece of property—­a boy’s hero-worship.

‘Why,’ said I, ‘you shave like an angel, Mr. Rowley!’

‘Thank you, my lord,’ says he.  ’Mr. Powl had no fear of me.  You may be sure, sir, I should never ’ave had this berth if I ’adn’t ’ave been up to Dick.  We been expecting of you this month back.  My eye!  I never see such preparations.  Every day the fires has been kep’ up, the bed made, and all!  As soon as it was known you were coming, sir, I got the appointment; and I’ve been up and down since then like a Jack-in-the-box.  A wheel couldn’t sound in the avenue but what I was at the window!  I’ve had a many disappointments; but to-night, as soon as you stepped out of the shay, I knew it was my—­it was you.  Oh, you had been expected!  Why, when I go down to supper, I’ll be the ‘ero of the servants’ ’all:  the ‘ole of the staff is that curious!’

‘Well,’ said I, ’I hope you may be able to give a fair account of me—­sober, steady, industrious, good-tempered, and with a first-rate character from my last place?’

He laughed an embarrassed laugh.  ‘Your hair curls beautiful,’ he said, by way of changing the subject.  ’The Viscount’s the boy for curls, though; and the richness of it is, Mr. Powl tells me his don’t curl no more than that much twine—­by nature.  Gettin’ old, the Viscount is.  He ’ave gone the pace, ’aven’t ‘e, sir?’