Mr. Oliver was the funniest-looking old gent I ever see, if I may say so respectfully. He was as bald as an egg, with a sort of frill of brown hair going from ear to ear behind; and as if that wasn't enough, he was shaved as clean as a whistle, as though he had made up his mind that people shouldn't say that it had all gone to beard and whiskers, anyway. He wrote books, a great many of them, and you may often see his name in the papers, and he was for ever poking about into what didn't concern him, and my Lady, she said to me when she found me a little put out at him asking about how things went on in the servants' hall, she said to me-- 'You mustn't mind him, Mary,' she said; 'you know he likes to find out all that he can about everything, so as to put it in his books.' And he certainly talked to every one he came across--even the stable-boys--in a way that you could hardly think becoming from a gentleman to servants, if he wasn't an author, and so to have allowances made for him, poor man! He talked to the housemaids, and he talked to the groom, and he talked to the footman that waited on him at lunch when he had it late, as he did sometimes, owing to him having been kept past the proper time by his story-writing, for he wrote a good part of the day most days, and often went up to London while he was staying with us--to sell his goods, I suppose. He wore curious clothes, not like most gentlemen, but all wool things, even to his collars and his boots, which were soft and soppy like felt; and he took snuff to that degree I wouldn't have believed any human nose could have borne it, and he must have been a great trial to Mrs. Oliver until she got used to him and his pottering about all over the house in his soft-soled shoes; and the mess he made of his pocket-handkerchieves and his linen! Mrs. Oliver was a round little fat bunch of a woman, if I may say so in speaking of master's own aunt by marriage, and him a baronet. She had the most lovely jewellery, and was very fond of wearing it of an evening, more than most people do when they are staying with relations and there's no company. She never spoke much except to say, 'Yes, Dick dear,' and 'No, Dick dear,' when they spoke to each other; but they were as fond of each other as pigeons on a roof, and always very pleasant-spoken and nice to wait on. As for James, he was the jolliest man I ever met, and cook said the same. He was like Sam Weller in the book, or would have been if he had lived in those far-off times; but footmen are more genteel now than they were then.