when he was letting me out; and I've always remembered the words
and the tone as the first sign of the quickening drama of poor
Brooksmith's fate. It was indeed an education, but to what was
this sensitive young man of thirty-five, of the servile class,
being educated?

Practically and inevitably, for the time, to companionship, to the
perpetual, the even exaggerated reference and appeal of a person
brought to dependence by his time of life and his infirmities and
always addicted moreover--this was the exaggeration--to the art of
giving you pleasure by letting you do things for him. There were
certain things Mr. Offord was capable of pretending he liked you to
do even when he didn't--this, I mean, if he thought YOU liked them.
If it happened that you didn't either--which was rare, yet might
be--of course there were cross-purposes; but Brooksmith was there
to prevent their going very far. This was precisely the way he
acted as moderator; he averted misunderstandings or cleared them
up. He had been capable, strange as it may appear, of acquiring
for this purpose an insight into the French tongue, which was often
used at Mr. Offord's; for besides being habitual to most of the
foreigners, and they were many, who haunted the place or arrived
with letters--letters often requiring a little worried
consideration, of which Brooksmith always had cognisance--it had
really become the primary language of the master of the house. I
don't know if all the malentendus were in French, but almost all
the explanations were, and this didn't a bit prevent Brooksmith's
following them. I know Mr. Offord used to read passages to him
from Montaigne and Saint-Simon, for he read perpetually when alone-
-when THEY were alone, that is--and Brooksmith was always about.
Perhaps you'll say no wonder Mr. Offord's butler regarded him as