How many portly butlers are kept in subjection by having
a footman ready to supplant them. Of all cards in the servitude pack,
however, the huntsman's is the most difficult one to play. A man may say,
'I'm dim'd if I won't clean my own boots or my own horse, before I'll put
up with such a fellow's impudence'; but when it comes to hunting his own
hounds, it is quite another pair of shoes, as Mr. Bragg would say.
Mr. Bragg regularly took possession of poor Puff; as regularly as a
policeman takes possession of a prisoner. The reader knows the sort of
feeling one has when a lawyer, a doctor, an architect, or any one whom we
have called in to assist, takes the initiative, and treats one as a
nonentity, pooh-poohing all one's pet ideas, and upsetting all one's
well-considered arrangements.
Bragg soon saw he had a greenhorn to deal with, and treated Puff
accordingly. If a 'perfect servant' is only to begot out of the
establishments of the great, Mr. Bragg might be looked upon as a paragon of
perfection, and now combined in his own person all the bad practices of all
the places he had been in.
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