One day he penetrated into the kitchen (having previously been rummaging
the kitchen-garden) and insisted upon teaching our cook how to make
curry. The lesson was much needed, and it was equally well intended, but
it was a mistake. Everything cannot be carried by storm, whatever the
military may think. Jane said, "Yes, sir," at every point that
approached to a pause in the Colonel's ample instructions, but she never
moved her eyes from the magnificent moustache which drooped above the
stew-pan, nor her thoughts from the one idea produced by the
occasion--that The Gentleman had caught her without her cap. In short
our curries were no worse, and no better, in consequence of the shock to
kitchen etiquette (for that was all) which she received.
And yet we modified our household ways for him, as they were never
modified for any one else. On Martha's weekly festival for cleaning the
bedrooms (and if a room was occupied for a night, she scrubbed after the
intruder as if he had brought the plague in his portmanteau) the
smartest visitor we ever entertained had to pick his or her way through
the upper regions of the house, where soap and soda were wafted on high
and unexpected breezes along passages filled with washstands and
clothes-baskets, cane-seated chairs and baths, mops, pails and brooms.
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