the
impression of having recently shown a proper spirit.

"She'll be better in bed, I think, Masham. She's had such a tiring day.
It was my fault. I was rather afraid at the time. I suppose she'll be
all right. She gets everything she wants, I suppose?"

"I beg your ladyship's pardon!"

"She gets everything she wants?"

"So far as comes to my knowledge, my lady. Touching wishes not
expressed, I could not undertake to say." Mrs. Masham bridled somewhat,
and showed signs of having a right to feel injured. "If your ladyship
would make inquiry, and satisfy yourself...." Then something would be
revealed in the service of Truth. Only she did not finish the sentence.

It was Gwen's way to accept every challenge. "Is her bed nice and warm?"
said she, going straight to a point--the nearest in sight, for this took
place within view of the bed in question, seen through a half-open door.
Prudence would have waived investigation, but Gwen's prudence was never
at home when wanted. She ought not to have accepted the housekeeper's
suggestion that she could satisfy herself by an autopsy. The comfort of
this couch, warm or cold, was already leagues above its occupant's
wildest conception of luxury. What must her ladyship do but say:--"Yes,
thank you, Masham, I'll feel for myself." And there, if that young
hussy, Lupin, hadn't sent the hot bottle right down to the end!

This version of the incident, gathered from a subsequent communication
of the housekeeper, will be at once intelligible to all but the very few
to whom the hot bottle is a stranger. _They_ have not had the experience
so many of us are familiar with, of being too short to reach down all
that way, and having either to wallow under the coverlids like a Kobold,
or untuck the bed, and get at the remote bottle like a paper-knife.

Probably this bottle's prominence in the unpleasantness that germinated
among the servants who remained at the Towers after the departure of the
Earl and Countess was due to the extreme impalpability of other
grievances. It was something you could lay hold of; and was laid hold
of, for instance, by Miss Lutwyche, to flagellate Mrs. Masham. "At any
rate," said that severe critic, "what I took charge of, that I would act
up to. When I undertook the old party in Cavendish Square, she was kept
warm, and no playing fast and loose with bottles. And she didn't give
offence, that I see, but seemed"--here her love of new expressions came
in, tending to