compliment. He took it as such, gratefully and with all the tact
in the world. He knew I really couldn't help him and that I knew
he knew I couldn't; but we discussed the situation--with a good
deal of elegant generality--at the foot of the stairs, in the hall
already dismantled, where I had so often discussed other situations
with him. The executors were in possession, as was still more
apparent when he made me pass for a few minutes into the dining-
room, where various objects were muffled up for removal.

Two definite facts, however, he had to communicate; one being that
he was to leave the house for ever that night (servants, for some
mysterious reason, seem always to depart by night), and the other--
he mentioned it only at the last and with hesitation--that he was
already aware his late master had left him a legacy of eighty
pounds. "I'm very glad," I said, and Brooksmith was of the same
mind: "It was so like him to think of me." This was all that
passed between us on the subject, and I know nothing of his
judgement of Mr. Offord's memento. Eighty pounds are always eighty
pounds, and no one has ever left ME an equal sum; but, all the
same, for Brooksmith, I was disappointed. I don't know what I had
expected, but it was almost a shock. Eighty pounds might stock a
small shop--a VERY small shop; but, I repeat, I couldn't bear to
think of that. I asked my friend if he had been able to save a
little, and he replied: "No, sir; I've had to do things." I
didn't inquire what things they might have been; they were his own
affair, and I took his word for them as assentingly as if he had
had the greatness of an ancient house to keep up; especially as
there was something in his manner that seemed to convey a prospect
of further sacrifice.