“Well, it is all her fault, so Lady Helen says,” the Society Newsman went on, as suavely as though he were referring to no greater tragedy than a failure on the Matrimonial Exchange. “The dear Duchess would dismiss one of her carriage footmen because he was three-quarters of an inch shorter than his fellow. Lady Helen’s maid tells her that the man wore cork wedges in his boots till he could hardly keep his balance, and was quite willing to meet her views and obliging, but the other day he had to go out unexpectedly, and in his hurry forgot the corks; the Duchess’s eagle eye caught the disparity, her artistic sense was outraged, and the poor Duke had to give the man notice. She said that so long as Nature continued occasionally to turn out human beings six feet two inches in height she would not put up with a trumped-up, inferior article, only six feet one, of which a quarter only was genuine flesh and blood and the rest cork, and who looked as though liable to fall on his nose. Men of her standard height were to be had, and she meant to have them, all through alike; the cork-tipped variety she would leave to Bishop’s wives, dowager Countesses, and other latitudinarians.” “So like the dear Duchess,” Lady Rotherfield laughed. “Poor Duke, what could he say?” “There was only one thing he could say to the man. Well, the fellow resented his dismissal, which was rather absurd of him.” “He ought to have been thankful to get rid of the corks,” was Sir Perrott’s opinion. “Instead of which he appears to have declared that the proper thing for the Duchess to have done was to have sacked his tall colleague and replaced him by a man to match himself, minus the corks. This was flat treason in the face of the fact that the standard height of the Lancashires’ carriage footmen was settled for all time in the second year of the reign of William and Mary. When the _lèse-majesté_ was repeated to the Duchess she became livid. The sacredness of the Lancashire traditions to be scoffed at by a cork-mounted flunkey! Should the ducal glory be belittled by a creature whose only claim for notice rested upon a pair of false heels? The consequence was that the wretched man was told to go on the spot, and that happened just after the discovery of the compromising hair-pin.” “Oh, I see,” said Sir Perrott. “The man thought he would get what he could out of the ducal _ménage_, and went straight off with his secret to Hepplethwaite. Hepplethwaite gave him twenty pounds for it, and resold it within the hour to the Duke for a hundred and an invitation for his wife to the next reception at Vaux House.” “I must remember not to go,” Lady Rotherfield murmured. “That odious pushing woman tries to work her way everywhere.”