It was a little unkind, I think. I should not record it of her were not Roger so insistent.
"Now," said Udo, and lolloped sadly off. It was his one really dignified moment in Euralia.
On his way to his apartment he met Wiggs.
"Wiggs," he said solemnly, "if ever you can do anything to annoy that woman, such as making her an apple-pie bed, or anything like that, I wish you'd do it."
Whereupon he retired for the night. Into the mysteries of his toilet we had perhaps better not inquire.
* * * * *
As the chronicler of these simple happenings many years ago, it is my duty to be impartial. "These are the facts," I should say, "and it is for your nobilities to judge of them. Thus and thus my characters have acted; how say you, my lords and ladies?"
I confess that this attitude is beyond me; I have a fondness for all my people, and I would not have you misunderstand any of them. But with regard to one of them there is no need for me to say anything in her defence. About her at any rate we agree.
I mean Wiggs. We take the same view as Hyacinth: she was the best little girl in Euralia. It will come then as a shock to you (as it did to me on the morning after I had staggered home with Roger's seventeen volumes) to learn that on her day Wiggs could be as bad as anybody. I mean really bad. To tear your frock, to read books which you ought to be dusting, these are accidents which may happen to anybody. Far otherwise was Wiggs's fall.
She adopted, in fact, the infamous suggestion of Prince Udo. Three nights later, with malice aforethought and to the comfort of the King's enemies and the prejudice of the safety of the realm, she made an apple-pie bed for the Countess.