"I fear I must respectfully decline, madam. I have not climbed since I was a small lad."
"You can walk up a flight of stairs, can't you?"
"Oh, stairs? Decidedly, madam. I will be at your disposal in a few moments."
"I wish you to accompany me now."
The butler shook his head.
"If I might excuse myself, madam. I am engaged on the concluding passages of the article to which you alluded just now, and I am anxious to complete it before Mr. Biffen's return."
Mrs. Waddington caused the eye before which Sigsbee H. had so often curled up and crackled like a burnt feather to blaze imperiously upon the butler. He met it with the easy aplomb of one who in his time has looked at dukes and made them feel that their trousers were bagging at the knees.
"Would you care to step inside and wait, madam?"
Mrs. Waddington was reluctantly obliged to realise that she was quelled. She had shot her bolt. A cyclone might shake this man, but not the human eye.
"I will not step inside."