Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/84

 say, 'Supper is on the table;' and then it would be, 'Ah? well, in a quarter of an hour.' An aide-de-camp would come in with a paper to sign, and perhaps Lord Chatham would say—'Oh, dear! that's too long: I can't possibly look at it now: you must bring it to-morrow.' The aide-de-camp would present it next day, and he would cry, 'Good God! how can you think of bringing it now? don't you know there's a review to-day?' Then, the day after, he was going to Woolwich. 'Well, never mind,' he would say; 'have you got a short one?—well, bring that.'

"Doctor, I once changed the dress of a whole regiment—the Berkshire militia. Somebody asked me, before a great many officers, what I thought of them, and I said they looked like so many tinned harlequins. One day, soon after, I was riding through Walmer village, when who should pop out upon me but the colonel, dressed in entirely new regimentals, with different facings, and more like a regiment of the line.  'Pray, pardon me, Lady Hester'—so I stopped, as he addressed me—'pray, pardon me,' said the colonel, 'but I wish to know if you approve of our new uniform.' Of course I made him turn about, till I inspected him round and round—pointed with my whip, as I sat on horseback, first here and then there—told him the waist was too short, and wanted half a button more—the collar was a little too high—and so on;