Then, seeing his mistress coming out of the French window from the drawing-room, he bounded calf-like towards her, and Petsy, nearly sick with cream and horror, was gathered to Lady Ashbridge's bosom.
"My dear Barbara," she said, "how upsetting your dog is! Poor Petsy's heart is beating terribly; she does not like dogs.

But I am very pleased to see you, and I have given you the blue room." It was clearly suitable that Barbara Jerome should have a large dog, for both in mind and body she was on the large scale herself.

She had a pleasant, high-coloured face, was very tall, enormously stout, and moved with great briskness and vigour.

She had something to say on any subject that came on the board; and, what was less usual in these days of universal knowledge, there was invariably some point in what she said.
She had, in the ordinary sense of the word, no manners at all, but essentially made up for this lack by her sincere and humourous kindliness.

She saw with acute vividness the ludicrous side of everybody, herself included, and to her mind the arch-humourist of all was her brother, whom she was quite unable to take seriously.