word. She is a fair, smallish, nervous woman, with delicate hands
and outlines, exceedingly sympathetic; so much so that while you are
telling her anything, she makes half a face in anticipation, and is ready
to shriek with laughter or shake her head with uttermost grief; and
sometimes, if you let her go too far in one direction, she does both. All
her narrations are with ups and downs of her hands, her eyes, her chin,
and her voice. Taking poor, good old Mr. Romer by the roll of his coat,
she made as if posing him, and said: 'There! Now, it's all very well for
you to say that there is anything equal to a woman's sufferings in this
world. I do declare you know nothing of what we unhappy women have to
endure. It's dreadful! No male creature can possibly know what tortures I
have to undergo.'

Mama neatly contrived, after interrupting her, to divert the subject. I
think that all the ladies imagined they were in jeopardy, but I knew Mrs.
Romer was perfectly to be trusted. She has wit which pleases, jusqu'aux
ongles, and her sense of humour never overrides her discretion with more
than a glance--never with preparation.

'Now,' she pursued, 'let me tell you what excruciating trials I have to
go through. This man,' she rocked the patient old gentleman to and fro,
'this man will be the death of me. He is utterly devoid of a sense of
propriety. Again and again I say to him--cannot the tailor cut down these
trowsers of yours? Yes, Mr. Amble, you preach patience to women, but this
is too much for any woman's endurance. Now, do attempt to picture to
yourself what an agony it must be to me:--he will shave, and he will wear
those enormously high trowsers that, when they are braced, reach up
behind to the nape of his neck! Only yesterday morning, as I was lying in
bed, I could see him in his dressing-room. I tell you: he will shave, and
he will choose the time for shaving early after he has braced these
immensely high trowsers that make such a placard of him. Oh, my goodness!
My dear Romer, I have said to him fifty times if I have said it once, my
goodness me! why can you not get decent trowsers such as other men wear?
He has but one answer--he has been accustomed to wear those trowsers, and
he would not feel at home in another pair. And what does he say if I
continue to complain? and I cannot but continue to complain, for it is
not only moral, it is physical torment to see the sight he makes of
himself; he says: "My dear, you shoul