The Dukes Dressing-Gown

"But how about the hall, Maria?" said the man. "There'll be a dreadful
slop!"

"Oh, I'll make that all right," she said. She disappeared, and quickly
returned with a couple of rugs, which she laid, wrong side up, on the
polished floor of the hallway. "Now you can step on those, sir, and
come into the kitchen. There's a fire there."

I thanked her, and presently found myself before a large stove, on
which it was evident, from the odors, that supper was preparing. In a
certain way the heat was grateful, but in less than a minute I was
bound to admit to myself that I felt as if I were enveloped in a vast
warm poultice. The little man and his wife--if wife she were, for she
looked big enough to be his mother, and young enough to be his
daughter--stood talking in the hall, and I could hear every word they
said.

"It's of no use for him to try to dry himself," she said, "for he's
wet to the bone. He must change his clothes, and hang those he's got
on before the fire."

"Change his clothes!" exclaimed the man. "How ever can he do that?
I've nothing that'll fit him, and of course he has brought nothing
along with him."

"Never you mind," said she. "Something's got to be got. Take him into
the little chamber. And don't consider the floor; that can be wiped
up."