Again Briggs responded, "Very good, my lord!" And, like an exemplary servant as he was, he lingered about the passage while Lord Winsleigh entered his library, and, after remaining there some ten minutes or so, came out again in hat and great coat. The officious Briggs handed him his cane, and inquired—
"'Ansom, my lord?"
"Thanks, no. I will walk."
It was a fine moonlight night, and Briggs stood for some minutes on the steps, airing his shapely calves and watching the tall, dignified figure of his master walking, with the upright, stately bearing which always distinguished him, in the direction of Pall Mall. Park Lane was full of crowding carriages with twinkling lights, all bound to the different sources of so-called "pleasure" by which the opening of the season is distinguished. Briggs surveyed the scene with lofty indifference, sniffed the cool breeze, and, finding it somewhat chilly, re-entered the house and descended to the servant's hall. Here all the domestics of the Winsleigh household were seated at a large table loaded with hot and savory viands,—a table presided over by a robust and perspiring lady, with a very red face and sturdy arms bare to the elbow.
"Lor', Mr. Briggs!" cried this personage, rising respectfully as he approached, "'ow late you are! Wot 'ave you been a-doin' on? 'Ere I've been a-keepin' your lamb-chops and truffles 'ot all this time, and if they's dried up 'taint my fault, nor that of the hoven, which is as good a hoven as you can wish to bake in. . . ."
She paused breathless, and Briggs smiled blandly.
"Now, Flopsie!" he said in a tone of gentle severity. "Excited again—as usual! It's bad for your 'elth—very bad! Hif the chops is dried, your course is plain—cook some more! Not that I am enny ways particular—but chippy meat is bad for a delicate digestion. And you would not make me hill, my Flopsie, would you?"
Whereupon he seated himself, and looked condescendingly round the table. He was too great a personage to be familiar with such inferior creatures as housemaids, scullery-girls, and menials of that class,—he was only on intimate terms with the cook, Mrs. Flopper, or, as he called her, "Flopsie,"—the coachman, and Lady Winsleigh's own maid, Louise Rénaud, a prim, sallow-faced Frenchwoman, who, by reason of her nationality, was called by all the inhabitants of the kitchen, "mamzelle," as being a name both short, appropriate, and convenient.
On careful examination, the lamb-chops turned out satisfactorily—"chippiness" was an epithet that could not justly be applied to them,—and Mr. Briggs began to eat them leisurely, flavoring them with a glass or two of fine port out of a decanter which he had taken the precaution to bring down from the dining-room sideboard.
"I ham, late," he then graciously explained—"not that I was detained in enny way by the people upstairs. The gay Clara went out early, but I was absorbed in the evenin' papers—Winsleigh forgot to ask me for them. But he'll see them at his club. He's gone there now on foot—poor fellah!"