Lady Maude's Mania

“Con-found those organs!” said the Earl of Barmouth.
“And frustrate their grinders,” cried Viscount Diphoos.
“They are such a nuisance, my boy.”
“True, oh sire,” replied the viscount, who had the heels of his patent leather shoes on the library chimney-piece of the town mansion in Portland Place. He had reached that spot with difficulty, and was smoking a cigar, to calm his nerves for what he called the operation.
“Tom, my boy.”
“Yes, gov’nor.”
“If her ladyship faints—”
“If what?” cried the viscount, bringing his heels into the fender with a crash.
“If—if—don’t speak so sharply, my dear Tom; it jars my back, and sets that confounded gout jigging and tearing at me all up my leg. I say, if her ladyship faints when we come back from the church, will you be ready to catch her. I’m afraid if I tried I should let her down, and it would look so bad before the servants.”
“Be too heavy for you, eh, gov’nor?” said Tom, grinning, as he mentally conjured up the scene.
“Yes, my boy, yes. She has grown so much stouter and heavier, and I have grown thinner and lighter since—since the happy day twenty-six years ago when I married her, Tom—when I married her. Yes, much stouter since I married her. How well I remember it all. Yes: it was an easterly wind, I recollect, and your poor dear mamma—her ladyship, Tom—had the toothache very badly. It made her face swell out on one side as we went across to Paris, and I had a deal of bother to get the waiter and chamber-maid to understand what a linseed-meal poultice was. Very objectionable thing a linseed-meal poultice; I never did like the smell.”