"Damn it, sir!" he flared out. "What do you think you are? I didn't
engage you for a kowtowing valet in waiting, sir! I asked you, sir, to
come under my roof as an intellectual co-worker, as one gentleman asks
another, and here you are making these niggery motions! They are
disgusting! They are defiling! They are beneath the dignity of one
gentleman to another, sir! What makes it more degrading, I perceive by
your mannerism that you assume a specious servility, sir, as if you
would flatter me by it!"
The old lawyer's face was white. His angry old eyes jerked Peter out of
his slight mummery. The negro felt oddly like a grammar-school boy
caught making faces behind his master's back. It shocked him into
sincerer manners.
"Captain," he said with a certain stiffness, "I apologize for my
mistake; but may I ask how you desire me to act?"
"Simply, naturally, sir," thundered the Captain, "as one alumnus of
Harvard to another! It is quite proper for a young man, sir, to assist
an old gentleman with his hat and coat, but without fripperies and
genuflections and absurdities!"
The old man's hauteur touched some spring of resentment in Peter.
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