"I must have told you how she found her cook drunk under the kitchen table when the Empress was coming to dinner, and tucked up her velvet sleeves (she always dressed like an Empress herself), cooked the whole meal, and appeared in the drawing-room as if she'd been sleeping on a bank of roses all day.
She could do anything with her hands--they all could--make a cottage or embroider a petticoat.
"And that's Queenie Colquhoun," she went on, turning the pages, "who took her coffin out with her to Jamaica, packed with lovely shawls and bonnets, because you couldn't get coffins in Jamaica, and she had a horror of dying there (as she did), and being devoured by the white ants.

And there's Sabine, the loveliest of them all; ah! it was like a star rising when she came into the room.

And that's Miriam, in her coachman's cloak, with all the little capes on, and she wore great top-boots underneath.

You young people may say you're unconventional, but you're nothing compared with her." Turning the page, she came upon the picture of a very masculine, handsome lady, whose head the photographer had adorned with an imperial crown.
"Ah, you wretch!" Mrs.Hilbery exclaimed, "what a wicked old despot you were, in your day! How we all bowed down before you! 'Maggie,' she used to say, 'if it hadn't been for me, where would you be now ?' And it was true; she brought them together, you know.

She said to my father, 'Marry her,' and he did; and she said to poor little Clara, 'Fall down and worship him,' and she did; but she got up again, of course.