Excerpt from Earth to Earth

She had arrived in a well-appointed auto-brougham, and with a thundering double-knock; but with no other cre dentials to the confidence of the head-butler. She had refused to give her name, accenting the refusal with a truculent flourish of reserve which plainly intimated to that dignified functionary that he would not like it if he got it. She had asked, plumply and plainly, to see the Duchess, and it was not one of her Grace's omnium-gatherum reception-days, or even a Committee-day, when patriotic and philanthropic ladies (members of societies for the Sup pression of some things and the encouragement of others) were wont to muster in great numbers beneath the fostering Wing of their Chief Patroness. Some of these were queer enough to look upon, as the head-butler could testify - it being a well-established rule in these twentieth-century days that the woman who lives to do well should also live to dress badly. But there was nothing that suggested Liberal Unionism or Female Suffrage about this lady, if, indeed, one might classify her under that generic heading; and as for Teetotalism, judging by the suppressed belliger ence of her manner, the untrammelled freedom of her ges tures, and the loudness of the tone in which She reiterated her request to be conducted to the presence of the mistress Of the house (and paying due regard to signs and tokens of a more subtle and diaphanous nature still), she was at that moment a little in liquor.

A drunken person to see your Grace! The head butler's imagination could not soar to the giddy heights of actual conception of the effect such an announcement would have upon his mistress. But he was very clear upon the point that the visitor must be got rid of. The question was, how to bring about this desirable exodus without a. Breach of the peace and the proprieties 2 The idea of a disturbance upon that exclusive threshold was not to be tolerated for a moment, and yet it hovered about the head-butler's polished cranium with the persistency of a bluebottle-fly. He saw the starch of his immaculate cravat, the almost archiepiscopal composure Of his bearing, and the highly-respectable corns encased in his patent-leather shoes in immediate jeopardy, as well as the dignity Of the house. Clearly, it was a case to be dealt with diplo matically.

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