asleep, Lord Mountstuart came in again, and down I had to duck.

He had brought a friend, who was as mad about old books and first
editions, as he; a stuffy, elderly thing, who had never seen Lord
Mountstuart's treasures before. As both were perfectly daft on the
subject, they must have kept me lying there an hour, while they fussed
about from one glass-protected book-case to another, murmuring
admiration of Caxtons, or discussing the value of a Mazarin Bible, with
their noses in a lot of old volumes which ought to have been eaten up by
moths long ago. As for me, I should have been delighted to set fire to
the whole lot.

At last Lord Mountstuart (whom I've nicknamed "Stewey") remembered that
there was a ball going on, and that he was the host. So he and the other
duffer pottered away, leaving the coast clear and the door wide open. It
was just my luck (which is always bad and always has been) that a pair
of flirting idiots, for whom the conservatory, or our "den," or the
stairs, wasn't secluded enough, must needs be prying about and spy that
open door before I had conquered my cramps and got up from behind the
sofa.

The dim light commended itself to their silliness, and after hesitating
a minute, the girl--whoever she was--allowed herself to be drawn into a
room where she had no business to be. Then, to make bad worse, they
selected the lounge to sit upon, and I had to lie closely wedged against
the wall, with "pins and needles" pricking all over my cramped body,
while some man I didn't know proposed and was accepted by some girl I
shall probably never see.

They continued to sit, making a tremendous fuss about each other, until