Pete still served at table, and made strenuous efforts to keep up all his old duties; but he was obviously growing weaker, and really serious blunders were beginning to be noticeable.

Bertram even hinted once or twice that perhaps it would be just as well to insist on his going; but to this Billy would not give her consent.

Even when one night his poor old trembling hands spilled half the contents of a soup plate over a new and costly evening gown of Billy's own, she still refused to have him dismissed.
"Why, Bertram, I wouldn't do it," she declared hotly; "and you wouldn't, either.

He's been here more than fifty years.

It would break his heart.
He's really too ill to work, and I wish he would go of his own accord, of course; but I sha'n't ever tell him to go--not if he spills soup on every dress I've got.