Presently, her ladyship came into the bedroom, and said, as a queen
might say to her tirewoman, "Put me into my dressing-gown." If there
were a feminine word for "sirrah," I think she would have liked to call
me it.

My eye, roving distractedly, pounced upon a gold-embroidered, purple
silk kimono, perhaps more appropriate to Pooh-Bah than to a stout
English lady of the lower middle class. I released it from its hook on
the door, and would that her ladyship had been as easy to release from
her bodice!

She had not one hook, but many; and they were all so incredibly tight
that, to put her into the dressing-gown as ordered, I feared it would be
necessary to melt and pour her out of the gown she had on.

While I wrestled, silent and red faced, with a bodice as snug as the
head of a drum, the lord of all it contained appeared in the doorway,
and stopped, looking at me in surprise.

He is common, too, this Sir Samuel, millionaire maker of pills; but he
is common in a good, almost pathetic way, quite different from his
wife's way--or Monsieur Charretier's. He has stick-up gray hair curling
all over his round head, blue eyes, twinkling with a mild, yet shrewd
expression (which might be merry if encouraged by her ladyship), and a
large, slouching body with stooped shoulders.

"What young lady have we here?" he inquired.

"Not a young lady at all," explained his wife sharply. "My new French
maid."