522 THE STORY OF MY LIFE [1859
them the better for it, and she always heartily enjoyed a joke. I remember hearing how one day at Alderley she raged and stormed because the gentlemen sat longer after dinfier than she liked. Old Mr. Davenport was the first to come into the drawing-room. "Well now, what have you been doing?" she exclaimed ; " what can you have found to talk about to keep you so long?" — "Would you really like to know what we 've been talking about, my lady ? " said Mr. Davenport. "Yes indeed/' she stormed. "Well," said Mr. Davenport very deliberately, "we talked first about the depression in the salt (mines), and that led us on inadvertently to pepper, and that led us to cayenne, and that, my lady, led us ... to yourself,"—and she was vastly amused. One day her maid told her there was a regular uproar downstairs about precedence, as to which of the maids was to come in first to prayers. " Oh, that is very easily settled," said Lady Stanley; "the ugliest woman in the house must always, of course, have the precedence," and she heard no more about it.
Another house which I was frequently invited to use as a centre for my excursions was that of my father's first cousin, Penelope, Mrs. Warren, who was living in the old home of Lady Jones at Worting, near Basingstoke. It was in a most dreary, cold, wind-stricken district, and was especially selected on that account by Lady Jones, because of its extreme contrast to the India which she abominated. Internally, however, the old red-brick house was very comfortable and charming, and Mrs. Warren herself a very sweet and lovable old lady, tenderly cared for