appearing at garden parties was, that he was engaged to wait on Lady
Camper.

And at one time, her not condescending to exchange visits with the
obsequious General was a topic fertile in irony. But she did condescend.
Lady Camper came to his gate unexpectedly, rang the bell, and was let in
like an ordinary visitor. It happened that the General was gardening--
not the pretty occupation of pruning--he was digging--and of necessity
his coat was off, and he was hot, dusty, unpresentable. From adoring
earth as the mother of roses, you may pass into a lady's presence without
purification; you cannot (or so the General thought) when you are caught
in the act of adoring the mother of cabbages. And though he himself
loved the cabbage equally with the rose, in his heart respected the
vegetable yet more than he esteemed the flower, for he gloried in his
kitchen garden, this was not a secret for the world to know, and he
almost heeled over on his beam ends when word was brought of the extreme
honour Lady Camper had done him. He worked his arms hurriedly into his
fatigue jacket, trusting to get away to the house and spend a couple of
minutes on his adornment; and with any other visitor it might have been
accomplished, but Lady Camper disliked sitting alone in a room. She was
on the square of lawn as the General stole along the walk. Had she kept
her back to him, he might have rounded her like the shadow of a dial,
undetected. She was frightfully acute of hearing. She turned while he
was in the agony of hesitation, in a queer attitude, one leg on the
march, projected by a frenzied tip-toe of the hinder leg, the very
fatallest moment she could possibly have selected for unveiling him.

Of course there was no choice but to surrender on the spot.

He began to squander his dizzy wits in profuse apologies. Lady Camper