The Dixons looked at it curiously, but coldly. To them it was nothing but
a writing-table with drawers made out of a highly polished outlandish
wood, with little devices of gilt rails, and drawer-furnishings, and tiny
figures, and little bits of china "let in," which might easily catch a
duster, thought Mrs. Dixon, and "mak' trooble." That it had belonged to a
French dramatist under Louis Quinze, and then to a French Queen; that the
plaques were Sèvres, and the table as a whole beyond the purse of any but
a South African or American man of money, was of course nothing to her.

"It bets me," said Dixon, in the tone of one making conversation, "why
Muster Melrose didn't gie us orders to unpack soom more o' them cases.
Summat like thatten"--he pointed to the table--"wud ha' lukit fine i'
the drawin'-room."

Tyson made no reply. He was a young man of strong will and taciturn
habit; and he fully realized that if he once began discussing with Dixon
the various orders received from Mr. Edmund Melrose with regard to his
home-coming, during the preceding weeks, the position that he, Tyson,
intended to maintain with regard to that gentleman would not be made any
easier. If you happened by mischance to have accepted an appointment to
serve and represent a lunatic, and you discovered that you had done so,
there were only two things to do, either to hold on, or "to chuck it."
But George Tyson, whose father and grandfather had been small land agents
before him, of the silent, honest, tenacious Cumbria sort, belonged to
a stock which had never resigned anything, till at least the next step
was clear; and the young man had no intention whatever of "chucking it."
But to hold on certainly meant patience, and as few words as might be.

So he only stopped to give one more anxious look round the table to see