"If you please, my lady, I cannot help it. The cook and the parlour-maid and the two housemaids fought over it in the servants' hall, and are now in tears, not having read a word of it."
To all appearance the housekeeper had lost her senses. Though this was no wonder, Penelope wondered at it.
"Well," she said at last, "I see what's in the hat, but what's in the newspaper?"
"If you please, my lady, according to Timothy Bunting and Smith, who appear to have read it, it contains the true account of what happened at Goring House the other day, when all the gentlemen staying there, hearing from the Times that your ladyship had a fine boy on the eighteenth, and no husband named by your ladyship's particular directions, all got up one after the other, and, requesting private interviews with her upset Grace, the duchess, declared upon their oaths, though in secret, that they had married you themselves!"
She recited this in a strange, mechanical way, which would have been extremely effective upon the stage, as a picture of hopeless conventionality wounded to death, and at last dying in sheer indifference to all things.
"Dear me!" said Penelope, "dear me!"
"It furthermore appears, my lady, begging your pardon for mentioning it, and I have reproved Bunting bitterly for daring to do so, though I haven't read the fragments in the hat, that no one believes your ladyship's word at all as to your being married."
"Oh, how shameful!" said Penelope. "Why, here's baby!"
The nurse coughed and hid her mouth with her hand.
"Yes, my lady, so he is," said Miss Mackarness. "There doesn't seem any doubt whatsoever about that, but—"