In Which the Corset Is Loosened …
There are so many exciting things in this book—a Stolen Diamond, snooping stable boys, a famous detective, the disappearance of a Valuable Wig, love, pickle éclairs, unbridled Evil, and the Black Deeds of the Shipless Pirates—that it really does seem a shame to begin with ladies' underwear.
But the underwear, you see, is the reason that all those Unprecedented Marvels happened—with the possible exception of the pickle éclairs. The underwear in question was a painful item called a corset. A corset, you see, is a sort of undershirt made of straps and sticks and strings and whalebones. In the days of horse-drawn carriages and powdered wigs, some women—and some men—would strap themselves into a corset and it would squeeze them and pinch them so much that they would look skinny.
Imagine being pinched like that day after day, year after year. It could make a nice lady into a mean one. So imagine what it would do to a lady like M'Lady Luggertuck, who was a nasty beast to start.
Our story begins one morning, long after the corset had turned M'Lady Luggertuck into one of the worst people in the world. For some reason, which no one knows, M'Lady Luggertuck decided not to be pinched and squeezed that morning.
"Not quite so tight today, Crotty," said M'Lady Luggertuck as Old Crotty, her lady's maid, pulled at her corset strings.
Old Crotty gasped. And she was not the sort who gasps very often. In fact, it had been seventeen years since she had expressed surprise of any kind.
But in Old Crotty's long memory there had never been a day when M'Lady Luggertuck had not wanted her corset as tight as Crotty could get it. Crotty was a tiny old thing, but she could pull those corset strings tighter than a hangman's noose. But not this day. A disappointed Crotty gave the strings not the usual mighty yank, but only a halfhearted tug.
"Ah, that feels much better, Crotty," said M'Lady Luggertuck.
What with the rest of the dressing and a trip to the westernmost linen closet, a full twenty minutes elapsed before Old Crotty arrived in the kitchen to supervise the twisting of the customary Luggertuck Breakfast Fruitbraid.
And yet, in those twenty minutes, did it not seem that the news of the Unprecedented Marvel of the Loosened Corset had already spread throughout Smugwick Manor? Did it not seem to have already disturbed the stagnant air of the place from root cellar to turret?
There was a feeling amongst the servants that they might get away with, say, wiping their noses on their sleeves—an offense that would normally cost them their job. Footmen felt they might slouch a little. Maids felt they might scrub less thoroughly.
And in the kitchen …the iron rule of law was felt to be just a little rusty.
When Crotty finally reached the kitchen, she found no cook preparing to braid the Luggertuck Breakfast Fruitbraid. Another shock to the old maid.
The reason for the cook's absence was Horton Halfpott, the lowest, most pathetic kitchen boy in the whole place. The cook, Miss Neversly, had found it necessary to beat him—yet again.
Horton had dropped a stack of firewood somewhat carelessly next to the stove. That sort of thing was not done! The firewood was to be placed by the stove one piece at a time, very carefully and very quietly. When the pulpy clank of the dropped wood rang out, the cook had abandoned the Fruitbraid in favor of cracking young Halfpott on the head with a wooden spoon, repeatedly.
"Lazy, lazy, lazy boy!" roared Miss Neversly, a middle-aged woman with two hundred years' worth of meanness in her. Her wild black hair whipped across her furious face as she swung her spoon at the kitchen boy. "Wretched wart-covered ape!"
Beware, Reader; do not form an opinion of Horton based on Miss Neversly's cruel words. True, he had just been a trifle careless in the matter of firewood fetching. However, he is to be the hero of our story and it is only fair to point out that he was ill-paid and ill-treated for his services, which mostly involved the washing of dishes and were normally done quite carefully.
Also, please don't judge him by his appearance. His clothes were grubby because he only had one set and he worked in a messy kitchen. His brown hair was messy because he didn't have a comb or a brush. His head was a little wobbly, his nose was kind of funny, and his lips were a little too lippy because that's just the way they were.
He was a smart boy and a pretty friendly one, too, but those qualities rarely shine when you're stuck in a hot, smoky, greasy kitchen day after day after day.
"Please stop hitting me with your spoon, Miss Neversly," Horton said. See, Reader? He was polite and mannerly, even in those circumstances, even while being beaten about the head with a wooden spoon.
"How many times have I told you not to drop the firewood?" demanded Neversly.
"Why, never, Miss Neversly. You've never had occasion to tell me, because this is the first time I've ever done it."
This was quite true. He had of course wanted to drop the firewood, as any kitchen boy would. Kitchen boys do not see the merits of bending down and gently placing firewood on the floor. And rightly so—it's bad for the back.
Nonetheless, Horton Halfpott had never dropped the firewood before. Here, in Smugwick Manor, the ancestral home of the Luggertucks, there had always been a sense that such behavior simply wasn't proper.
But today things were different. There had been a Loosening. Horton felt it, and so did everyone else. And may God have mercy on their souls!
