More puzzling to me than her interest in all our friends was her choice of a few for her special favour. I could not see the reason for her choice, unless I had suspected her of a sudden passion for literature and art. Certainly her chief attentions were lavished on the most distinguished among our friends, who were the very people most apt to put her devotion to the test. She adored Whistler, though when he was in London he had a way not only of dropping in to dinner, but sometimes of dropping in so late that it had to be cooked all over again. She was so far from minding that, at the familiar sound of his knock and ring, her face was wreathed in smiles, she seemed to look upon the extra work as a privilege, and I have known her, without a word, trot off to the butcher's or the green-grocer's, or even to the tobacconist's in the Strand for the little Algerian cigarettes he loved. She went so far as to abandon certain of her prejudices for his benefit, and I realized what a conquest he had made when she resigned herself to cooking a fowl in a casserole and serving it without bread-sauce. She discovered the daintiness of his appetite, and it was delightful to see her hovering over him at table and pointing out the choice bits in every dish she passed. She was forever finding an excuse to come into any room where he might be. Altogether, it was as complete a case of fascination as if she had known him to be the great master he was; and she was his slave long before he gave her the ten shillings, which was valued sentimentally as I really believe a tip never was before or since by a British servant. Henley was hardly second in her esteem, and this was the more inexplicable because he provided her with so many more chances to prove it. Whistler then lived in Paris, and appeared only now and then. Henley lived in London half the week, and rarely missed a Thursday. For it was on that evening that the "National Observer," which he was editing, went to press, and the printers in Covent Garden were conveniently near to our chambers. His work done, the paper put to bed, about ten or eleven he and the train of young men then in attendance upon him would come round; and to them, in the comfortable consciousness that the rest of the week was their own, time was of no consideration. Henley exulted in talk: if he had the right audience he would talk all night; and the right audience was willing to listen so long as he talked in our chambers. But Trimmer, in the kitchen, or handing round sandwiches, could not listen, and yet she lingered as long as anybody. It might be almost dawn before he got up to go, but she was there to fetch him his crutch and his big black hat, and to shut the door after him. Whatever the indiscretion of the hour one Thursday, she welcomed him as cordially the next, or any day in between when inclination led him to toil up the three long flights of stairs to our dinner-table.