Explore "A Humble Enterprise" by Ada Cambridge on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"Polly, come and have a look round, and give me your advice, will you? My fellow says he's got all the luggage up, and he wants to know where to put some of the new things."
Mr. Anthony Churchill would have felt himself insulted if you had called his "fellow" a valet. Australian gentlemen don't keep valets. The person in question had certainly filled that office in England, where his master had picked him up, but was now merely a sort of private male housemaid of superior quality, who waited on his employer in the East Melbourne chambers, and made him more comfortable than anybody else could have done. When he was away travelling, Maude took on his servant as an extra footman, in order to guard him against the seductions of other wealthy bachelors who were known to covet him; but when Tony was at home, Jarvis was his indispensable attendant. Mary Oxenham used to say that Jarvis was the main cause of that celibacy which she could not but deplore in a man of thirty-five, who could so well afford a wife and family.