Gives a strange zest to that loquacious dame
Whose ready tongue and easy blundering wit
Provoke fresh uproar at each happy hit!
Note how her humour into strange grimace
Tempts the smooth meekness of yon Quaker’s face.[[13]]
But—denser grows the crowd round Partington;
’T’were vain to try to name them one by one.”[[14]]
It was not without some trepidation of spirit that I surrendered myself into the hands of a professional maker-up of theatrical folk and saw him lay in the shadows and wrinkles necessary to the character, and adjust my front piece of grey hair into position; and, as my conception of the quaint Mrs. Partington was that of a kindly soul, I counselled the attendant—a Hungarian attaché of the local theatre—to make good-natured vertical wrinkles over my brow, and not horizontal ones, which indicate the cynical and harsh character.
My disguise was soon so perfect that my friend Mrs. L. Q. C. Lamar, who came in shortly after the ordeal of making-up was over, utterly failed to recognise me in the country woman before her. She looked about the room with a slight reserve aroused by finding herself thus in the presence of a stranger, and asked of Emily, “Where is Mrs. Clay?” At this my cousins burst into merry laughter, in which Mrs. Lamar joined when assured of my identity.