“Ah!” said the old butler, “there was gentry then; I remember them drivin’ down to Newmarket (my native place, sir) with their own horses.  There was n’t so much o’ these here middle classes then.  There was more, too, what you might call the milk o’ human kindness in people then—­none o’ them amalgamated stores, every man keepin’ his own little shop; not so eager to cut his neighbour’s throat, as you might say.  And then look at the price of bread!  O dear! why, it is n’t a quarter what it was!”

“And are people happier now than they were then?” asked Shelton.

The old butler sucked his pipe.

“No,” he answered, shaking his old head; “they’ve lost the contented spirit.  I see people runnin’ here and runnin’ there, readin’ books, findin’ things out; they ain’t not so self-contented as they were.”

“Is that possible?” thought Shelton.

“No,” repeated the old man, again sucking at his pipe, and this time blowing out a lot of smoke; “I don’t see as much happiness about, not the same look on the faces.  ’T isn’t likely.  See these ’ere motorcars, too; they say ‘orses is goin’ out”; and, as if dumbfounded at his own conclusion, he sat silent for some time, engaged in the lighting and relighting of his pipe.

The girl at the far end stirred, cleared her throat, and settled down again; her movement disengaged a scent of frowsy clothes.  The policeman had approached and scrutinised these ill-assorted faces; his glance was jovially contemptuous till he noticed Shelton, and then was modified by curiosity.

“There’s good men in the police,” the aged butler said, when the policeman had passed on—­“there’s good men in the police, as good men as you can see, and there ’s them that treats you like the dirt—­a dreadful low class of man.  Oh dear, yes! when they see you down in the world, they think they can speak to you as they like; I don’t give them no chance to worry me; I keeps myself to myself, and speak civil to all the world.  You have to hold the candle to them; for, oh dear! if they ’re crossed—­some of them—­they ’re a dreadful unscrup’lous lot of men!”

“Are you going to spend the night here?”

“It’s nice and warm to-night,” replied the aged butler.  “I said to the man at that low place I said:  ‘Don’t you ever speak to me again,’ I said, ‘don’t you come near me!’ Straightforward and honest ’s been my motto all my life; I don’t want to have nothing to say to them low fellows”—­he made an annihilating gesture—­“after the way they treated me, takin’ my things like that.  Tomorrow I shall get a room for three shillin’s a week, don’t you think so, sir?  Well, then I shall be all right.  I ’m not afraid now; the mind at rest.  So long as I ran keep myself, that’s all I want.  I shall do first-rate, I think”; and he stared at Shelton, but the look in his eyes and the half-scared optimism of his voice convinced the latter that he lived in dread.  “So long as I can keep myself,” he said again, “I sha’n’t need no workhouse nor lose respectability.”