The Craze of Christina — page 190: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

186 The Craze of Christina. bound by no insane conditions, and could, if they chose, turn him out of his situation at a “month’s notice, just as if he were any other or- dinary butler. It had been James Docker’s doing that the clause in the will concerning the three years that must elapse before Clifford’s marriage had been inserted. Docker had not relished the idea of a “‘missus,’’ and he had safeguarded himself, as he believed, for a comfortable period of time against such an unwelcome con- tingency. Docker had had Henry Greville completely under his thumb; and he now hoped to place his new master in the same position. Mark’s youth confirmed him in the conviction that it would be avery simple matter to reduce him to the same level as his late master; for Docker, like a great many elderly men of all classes, had asupreme contempt for youth. He forgot to take into account that the old miser, now dead and buried, had been almost in his second childhood when his ingenious and ener- getic butler had put it into his mind to add those remarkable clauses and conditions to his will which were to tie up his heir under the iron rule of his own manservant. It had been very easy to play upon the old man’s master Comichooks:. co