corners of his mouth drooping instead of maintaining their everlasting
twist upward in the set smile of humility.

He had been there for thirty years and more, and now he was no longer
needed. He would have to get out. He had saved a little money,--not much,
but enough to start a small business of some sort,--and he was complaining
bitterly to himself of the fate that deprived him of Mr. Thorpe's advice
just when it was imperative that he should know what enterprise would be
the safest for him to undertake. It nettled him to think that he had
failed to take advantage of his opportunities while this shrewd, capable
old man was alive and in a position to set him on the right path to
prosperity. He should have had the sense to look forward to this very day.

For thirty years he had gone on believing that he knew so much more than
Mr. Thorpe that Mr. Thorpe couldn't possibly get along without him, and
now he was brought up sharply against the discovery that he couldn't get
along without Mr. Thorpe. For thirty years he had done only the things
that Mr. Thorpe wanted him to do, instructed him to do, or even drove him
to do. Suddenly he found himself with absolutely nothing to do, or at any
rate with no one to tell him what to do, and instead of a free and
independent agent, with no one to order him about, he wasn't anything,--he
wasn't anything at all. This was not what he had been looking forward to
with such complacency and confidence. He was like a lost soul. No one to
tell him what to do! No one to valet! No one to call him a blundering
idiot! No one to despise except himself! And he had waited thirty years
for the day to come when he could be his own man, with the power to tell
every one to go to the devil--and to do so himself if he saw fit. He hardly
recognised himself when he looked in the mirror. Was that scared, bleak,
wobegone face a reflection? Was he really like that?

He was filled with a bitter rage against Mr. Thorpe. How he hated him for
dying like this and leaving him with nothing to do after all these years
of faithful service. And how shocked he was, and frightened, to discover
himself wanting to pause outside his master's door with his head cocked to
hear the voice that would never shout out to him again.

He knew to a penny just how much he had in the Savings Banks about town,--a
trifle over twelve thousand dollars, the hoardings of thirty years. He had
gone on being a valet all these years without a