THE BOY AT HOME



Your Boy is your valet de chambre, your butler, your tailor, your
steward and general agent, your interpreter, or oriental translator
and your treasurer. On assuming charge of his duties he takes steps
first, in an unobtrusive way, to ascertain the amount of your income,
both that he may know the measure of his dignity, and also that he
may be able to form an estimate of what you ought to spend. This is
a matter with which he feels he is officially concerned. Indeed, the
arrangement which accords best with his own view of his position and
responsibilities is that, as you draw your salary each month, you
should make it over to him in full. Under this arrangement he has a
tendency to grow rich, and, as a consequence, portly in his figure
and consequential in his bearing, in return for which he will manage
all your affairs without allowing you to be worried by the cares of
life, supply all your wants, keep you in pocket money, and maintain
your dignity on all occasions. If you have not a large enough soul
to consent to this arrangement, he is not discouraged. He will still
be your treasurer, meeting all your petty liabilities out of his own
funds and coming to your aid when you find yourself without change.
As far as my observations go, this is an infallible mark of a really
respectable Boy, that he is never without money. At the end of the
month he presents you a faithful account of his expenditure, the
purport of which is plainly this, that since you did not hand over
your salary to him at the beginning of the month, you are to do so
now. Q.E.F. There is a mystery about these accounts which I have
never been able to solve. The total is always, on the face of it,