Everything cannot be carried by storm, whatever the military may think.

Jane said, "Yes, sir," at every point that approached to a pause in the Colonel's ample instructions, but she never moved her eyes from the magnificent moustache which drooped above the stew-pan, nor her thoughts from the one idea produced by the occasion--that The Gentleman had caught her without her cap.

In short our curries were no worse, and no better, in consequence of the shock to kitchen etiquette (for that was all) which she received.
And yet we modified our household ways for him, as they were never modified for any one else.

On Martha's weekly festival for cleaning the bedrooms (and if a room was occupied for a night, she scrubbed after the intruder as if he had brought the plague in his portmanteau) the smartest visitor we ever entertained had to pick his or her way through the upper regions of the house, where soap and soda were wafted on high and unexpected breezes along passages filled with washstands and clothes-baskets, cane-seated chairs and baths, mops, pails and brooms.
But the Colonel had "given such a jump" on meeting a towel-horse at large round a sharp corner, and had seemed so uncomfortable on finding everything that he thought was inside his room turned outside, that for that week Martha left the lower part of the house uncleaned, and did not turn either the dining or drawing rooms into the hall on their appointed days.

She had her revenge when he was gone.
On the day of his departure, my lamentations had met with the warmest sympathy as I stirred toffy over Jane's kitchen fire, whilst Martha lingered with the breakfast things, after a fashion very unusual with her, and gazed at the toast-rack and said, "the Colonel had eaten nothing of a breakfast to travel on." But next morning, I met her in another mood.