his habitual air of having in particular nothing to do and all the time
there was to do it in, and found a man waiting for him.

This was a person whom Sofia had quite overlooked after one glance had
classified and pigeon-holed him. A single glance had been enough. They do
some things better in England; a man cast for any particular rôle in life,
for example, is apt to conform himself, mentally, physically, and even as
to his outer habiliments, so nicely to the mould that he is forever
unmistakably what he is even to the most casual observer. So this man was a
butler, he had been born and bred a butler, he lived by buttling, a butler
he would die; not a pompous, turkeycock butler, such as the American stage
will offer you when it takes up English fashionable life in a serious way,
but a mild-mannered, decent body, with plain side-whiskers, chopped short
on a line with the lobes of his ears, otherwise clean-shaven, his hair
pathetically dyed, a colourless cast of countenance, eyes meek and mild.

He was soberly dressed in black coat and waistcoat, the latter showing a
white triangle of hard-polished shirt and a black bow tie, with indefinite
gray trousers and square-toed boots by no means new. His middle was crossed
by a thick silver watch-chain, and curious, old-fashioned buttons of agate
set in square frames of gold fastened his round stiff cuffs of yesterday.
He carried a well-brushed bowler as unfashionable as unseasonable.

When Mr. Karslake entered, the polished pattern of a young gentleman of
means, slenderly well set-up in an exquisitely tailored brown lounge suit,
wearing a boater and carrying a slender malacca stick in one chamois-gloved
hand, the butler stood up at his table, quietly acknowledged his
greeting--"Ah, Nogam! you here already?"--and waited for the younger man to
be seated before resuming his own chair: a stoop-shouldered symbol of
self-respecting respectability, not too intelligent, subdued by definite