3i6 



THE 

 DISCOMFITURE OF MRS. TRIMMINGS 



Mrs. Trimmings was a personage who awakened the 

 somewhat dubious and hesitating admiration of her 

 scullery maid. The upper servants did not share the 

 sentiment, for they had wit to perceive that their em- 

 ployer could only conventionally be regarded as a gentle- 

 woman ; but Mrs. Trimmings was a very great lady 

 indeed — in her own opinion. Her husband had made 

 money in London, had retired from the comparative ease of 

 an industrious life to the harder duty of passing his days 

 with his wife, listening to her nagging tongue, and watch- 

 ing her ridiculous attempts to obtain recognition in a 

 rank of society to which she did not belong — this latter 

 endeavour being, as we know, a not uncommon weak- 

 ness. 



Society ! a word divine 



To those who long, but are not yet there, 

 For which so many people pine 



Who are not haj)py when they get there. 



In London it was of coarse hopeless for Mrs. Trim- 

 mings to try and ' get on ' in the way she wished ; but 

 there is often hope in the country, so she had settled 

 down in a villa at Eastcliff, a pretty little seaside place 

 on the East Coast which her husband had bought, hoping 



