the subject of my personal
defects (unchanged despite her orders) to the success I was making with
her toilet. In her eyes, I began to take on lustre as a Treasure not to
be lightly thrown away on the turn of a dye.

When she was dressed and painted to represent a "lady motorist," it was
my business to pack not only for her but for Sir Samuel, who is the sort
of man to be miserable under the domination of a valet. There were a
round dozen of trunks, which had to be sent on by rail, and there was
also luggage for the automobile; such ingenious and pretty luggage (bran
new, like everything of her ladyship's, not excepting her complexion)
that it was really a pleasure to pack it. As for the poor motor maid, it
was broken to her that she must, figuratively speaking, live in a bag
during the tour, and that bag must have a place under her feet as she
sat beside the driver. It might make her as uncomfortable as it liked,
but whatever it did, it must on no account interfere with the chauffeur.

We were supposed to start at ten, but a woman of Lady Turnour's type
doesn't think she's making herself of enough importance unless she keeps
people waiting. She changed her mind three times about her veil, and had
her dressing-bag (a gorgeous affair, beside which mine is a mere
nutshell) reopened at the last minute to get out different hatpins.

It was half-past ten when the luggage for the automobile was ready to be
taken away, and having helped my mistress into her motoring coat, I left
her saying farewell to some hotel acquaintances she had scraped up, and
went out to put her ladyship's rugs into the car.

I had not seen it yet, nor the dreaded chauffeur, my galley-companion;
but as the front door opened, _voila_ both; the car drawn up at the
hotel entrance, the chauffeur dangling from its roof.

Never did I see anything in the way of an automobile so large, so azure,
so magnificent, so shiny as to varnish, so dazzling as to brass and
crystal.

Perhaps the windows aren't really crystal, but they were all bevelly and
glittering in the sunshine, and seemed to run round the car from back to
front, giving the effect of a Cinderella Coach fitted on to a motor.
Never was paint so blue, never was crest on carriage panel so large and
so like a vague, over-ripe tomato. Never was a chauffeur so long, so
slim, so smart, so leathery.

He was dangling not because he fancied himself as a tassel, but because
he was teaching some last piece