Of the accuracy of his taste, and the unusual scope of his endeavour, you will be able to form some opinion when I assure you he modelled himself upon _me_." I bowed, over my brandy.
"I am a scholar: yet I employed him to read aloud to me, and derived pleasure from his intonation.

I talk with refinement: yet he learned to answer me in language as precise as my own.

My cast-off garments fitted him not more irreproachably than did my amenities of manner.

Divest him of his tray, and you would find his mode of entering a room hardly distinguishable from my own--the same urbanity, the same alertness of carriage, the same superfine deference towards the weaker sex.

All--all my idiosyncrasies I saw reflected in him; and can you doubt that I was gratified?
He was my _alter ego_--which, by the way, makes it harder for me to pardon his behaviour with the cook." "Look here," I broke in; "you want a new butler ?" "Oh, you really grasp that fact, do you ?" he retorted.
"Why, then," said I, "let me cease to be your burglar and let me continue here as your butler." He leant back, spreading out the fingers of each hand on the table's edge.
"Believe me," I went on, "you might do worse.