It was a point of honour with old Miss Lexden to have the best room in every house where she visited; and so good was her system of tactics, that she generally succeeded. Far away in northern castles, where accommodation was by no means on a par with the rank of their owners, duchesses had been worse lodged and infinitely worse attended to than this old commoner, whose bitter tongue and incapacity for reticence did her yeoman's service on all possible occasions; not that she was ever rude, or even impolite, or said any thing approaching to actual savagery; but she had a knack of dropping hints, of firing from behind a masked battery of complacency, and of roughly rubbing "raws," which was more effective than the most studied attacks. As spent balls, when rolling calmly along, as innocuous, apparently, as those "twisters" of Hillyer's, which evade the dexterous "dip" of the longstop on the smooth short sward of the Oval, have been known, when attempted to be stopped, to take off a foot, so did old Miss Lexden's apparently casual remarks, after to all appearance missing their aim, tear and wound and send limping to the rear any one who rashly chanced to answer or gainsay her. Women, with that strange blundering upon the right so often seen among them, seemed to guess the diabolical power of the old lady's missiles, and avoided them with graceful ease, making gentle _détours_, which led them out of harm's way, or cowering for shelter in elegant attitudes under projecting platitudes; but men, in their conscious self-strength, would often stand up to bear the brunt of an argument, and always came away worsted from the fight. So that old Miss Lexden generally had her own way amongst her acquaintance, and one important part of her own way was the acquisition of the greatest comfort wherever she stayed.