“Those rolls, Peterson—they are rather nice,” he remarked, with a touch of enthusiasm that he quickly suppressed.
“Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Tim. I’m glad to have found something as pleases you, sir,” said Peterson, with a perfectly grave face.
“Yes. My appetite hasn’t been very good lately.”
“No, Mr. Tim,” agreed Peterson, tactfully.
After a short silence, Mr. Sheridan asked indifferently,
“Up in the town, sir. There’s a Bakery there sir as I never see the like of, Mr. Tim. Why, what with the cakes and rolls and puddin’s and what-not, I fairly lost me eyes, sir! You should stroll up to the town, like, Mr. Tim. It’s a neat little place, sure enough—”
His young master checked him gently, reminding him with a little wave of his hand, that he could not be expected to be interested in all that.
“But the rolls, Peterson. You might see that I have them for breakfast every morning.” So saying, he lit a cigarette, and walked out through the open window into his garden to meditate; leaving Peterson to meditate in his turn on this absolutely novel way of acting that Mr. Tim had adopted. Why, he could hardly believe that this formal and taciturn gentleman was Mr. Tim at all, and the old man who remembered the days, not long since, when he had connived in all sorts of pranks and waggery; when he had, many’s the time, been called in as judge and counsel as to how his young master should get himself out of this and that “scrape,” when in fact, Mr. Tim never dreamed of doing anything without Peterson’s opinion—remembering those jolly days when he had been honored with Mr. Tim’s perfect confidence, Peterson felt wounded. Then he glanced through the window. Mr. Tim, who had been promenading back and forth, leaning on a stick, in keeping with his extraordinary notion that blighted love always left one a semi-invalid, had now allowed himself to sink wearily onto a stone bench. On second thought, Peterson did not feel wounded; he felt rather like shaking dear Mr. Tim.
“Say what you like, that’s no way to go on, now. Life’s too easy for him, and that’s the truth, though I don’t say I wouldn’t hate to see it hard for him. But to take on so, just because a young lady was pleased to make up her mind not to have him! ’Tisn’t every young feller has the leisure to sit and mope himself into the vapors over a chip in his heart, that’ll be whole again in three months.” Then Peterson grinned. After all, such absurdities had not been entirely absent from his own youth; and he could not find it in his heart to censure Mr. Tim severely for any of his eccentricities. In his opinion this young man whom he had systematically spoiled since his childhood was not to be judged by common standards. Things that one might call faults in other young gentlemen, became merely “peculiarities” in the case of Mr. Tim. And it was not Peterson alone who inclined to shameless leniency with young Mr. Sheridan. His friends always managed to explain why it was perfectly all right for Tim to do things he oughtn’t to do, and leave undone all the things he ought to do; at college his teachers were forever giving him one more chance, and at home his grumpy uncle scolded him and pampered him, and feebly allowed his usually sharp old wits to be completely fuddled by Tim’s airy arguments.