"At the door he called out, 'I say, you Jinkses!' and two servant girls came tumbling out rather as if they were falling out of a trap and each trying to fall out first. 'I say,' old Sabre says, 'Mistress not back yet, is she?' and when they told him No, 'Well', d'you think you'd like to get me upstairs on that infernal chair?' he says. "'Oh, we _will_, sir,' and they got out one of those invalid chairs and started to lift him up. Course I wanted to take one end, but they wouldn't hear of it. 'If you please, we like carrying the master, sir,' and all that kind of thing; and they fussed him in and fiddled with his legs, snapping at one another for being rough as if they were the two women taking their disputed baby up to old Solomon. "They'd scarcely got on to the stairs when the front door opened and in walks his wife. My word, I thought they were going to drop him. She says in a voice as though she was biting a chip off an ice block, 'Mark, is it _really_ necessary--' Then she saw me and took her teeth out of the ice. 'Oh, it's Mr. Hapgood, isn't it? How very nice! Staying to lunch, of course? Do let's come into the drawing-room.' Very nice and affable. I always rather liked her. And we went along, I being rather captured and doing the polite in my well-known matinée idol manner, you understand; and I heard old Sabre saying, 'Well, let me out of the damned thing, can't you? Help me out of the damn thing'; and presently hobbled in and joined us, and soon after that lunch, exquisitely cooked and served and all very nice, too.