Colonel did
unheard-of things with impunity--threw open his bedroom shutters at
night, and more than once unbarred and unbolted the front door to go
outside for a late cigar. Nothing puzzled Martha more than the nattiness
with which he put all the bolts and bars back into their places, as if
he had been used to the door as long as she had.

Indeed he had all that power of making himself at home, which is most
fully acquired by having had to provide for yourself in strange places,
but he carried it too far.

One day he penetrated into the kitchen (having previously been rummaging
the kitchen-garden) and insisted upon teaching our cook how to make
curry. The lesson was much needed, and it was equally well intended, but
it was a mistake. Everything cannot be carried by storm, whatever the
military may think. Jane said, "Yes, sir," at every point that
approached to a pause in the Colonel's ample instructions, but she never
moved her eyes from the magnificent moustache which drooped above the
stew-pan, nor her thoughts from the one idea produced by the
occasion--that The Gentleman had caught her without her cap. In short
our curries were no worse, and no better, in consequence of the shock to
kitchen etiquette (for that was all) which she received.

And yet we modified our household ways for him, as they were never
modified for any one else. On Martha's weekly festival for cleaning the
bedrooms (and if a room was occupied for a night, she scrubbed after the
intruder as if he had brought the plague in his portmanteau) the
smartest visitor we ever entertained had to pick his or her way through
the upper regions of the house, where soap and soda were wafted on high
and unexpected breezes along passages filled with washstands and
clothes-baskets, cane-seated chairs and baths, mops, pails and brooms.
But the Colonel had "given such a jump" on meeting a towel-horse at
large round a sharp corner, and had seemed so uncomfortable on finding
everything that he thought was inside his room turned outside, that for
that week Martha left the lower part of the house uncleaned, and did not
turn either the dining or drawing rooms into the hall on their appointed
days. She had her revenge when he was gone.

On the day of his departure, my lamentations had met with the warmest
sympathy as I stirred toffy over Jane's kitchen fire, whilst Martha
lingered with the breakfast things, after a fashion very unusual with
her, and gazed at the toas