"Lor', Mr. Briggs!" cried this personage, rising respectfully as he approached, "'ow late you are! Wot 'ave you been a-doin' on? 'Ere I've been a-keepin' your lamb-chops and truffles 'ot all this time, and if they's dried up 'taint my fault, nor that of the hoven, which is as good a hoven as you can wish to bake in. . . ."
She paused breathless, and Briggs smiled blandly.
"Now, Flopsie!" he said in a tone of gentle severity. "Excited again--as usual! It's bad for your 'elth--very bad! Hif the chops is dried, your course is plain--cook some more! Not that I am enny ways particular--but chippy meat is bad for a delicate digestion. And you would not make me hill, my Flopsie, would you?"
Whereupon he seated himself, and looked condescendingly round the table. He was too great a personage to be familiar with such inferior creatures as housemaids, scullery-girls, and menials of that class,--he was only on intimate terms with the cook, Mrs. Flopper, or, as he called her, "Flopsie,"--the coachman, and Lady Winsleigh's own maid, Louise Rénaud, a prim, sallow-faced Frenchwoman, who, by reason of her nationality, was called by all the inhabitants of the kitchen, "mamzelle," as being a name both short, appropriate, and convenient.
On careful examination, the lamb-chops turned out satisfactorily--"chippiness" was an epithet that could not justly be applied to them,--and Mr. Briggs began to eat them leisurely, flavoring them with a glass or two of fine port out of a decanter which he had taken the precaution to bring down from the dining-room sideboard.
"I ham, late," he then graciously explained--"not that I was detained in enny way by the people upstairs. The gay Clara went out early, but I was absorbed in the evenin' papers--Winsleigh forgot to ask me for them. But he'll see them at his club. He's gone there now on foot-poor fellah!"
"I suppose she's with the same party?" grinned the fat Flopsie, as she held a large piece of bacon dipped in vinegar on her fork, preparatory to swallowing it with a gulp.
Briggs nodded gravely, "The same! Not a fine man at all, you know--no leg to speak of, and therefore no form. Legs--good legs--are beauty. Now, Winsleigh's not bad in that particular,--and I dare say Clara can hold her own,--but I wouldn't bet on little Francis."
Flopsie shrieked with laughter till she had a "stitch in her side," and was compelled to restrain her mirth.