Manchurian Books

Every year Lady Drew gave them an
invitation--a reward and encouragement of virtue with especial reference
to my mother and Miss Fison, the maid. They sat about in black and
shiny and flouncey clothing adorned with gimp and beads, eating
great quantities of cake, drinking much tea in a stately manner and
reverberating remarks.
I remember these women as immense. No doubt they were of negotiable
size, but I was only a very little chap and they have assumed nightmare
proportions in my mind. They loomed, they bulged, they impended.
Mrs. Mackridge was large and dark; there was a marvel about her head,
inasmuch as she was bald. She wore a dignified cap, and in front of that
upon her brow, hair was PAINTED. I have never seen the like since. She
had been maid to the widow of Sir Roderick Blenderhasset Impey, some
sort of governor or such-like portent in the East Indies, and from her
remains--in Mrs. Mackridge--I judge Lady Impey was a very stupendous and
crushing creature indeed. Lady Impey had been of the Juno type, haughty,
unapproachable, given to irony and a caustic wit.


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