The Escape of the Notorious Sir William Heans by William Gosse Hay

Heans, from his breakfast-room window, saw Abelia searching for flowers among the bushes with trembling hands. Her grey figure, tight of sleeve and bodice, relieved only by white vandyke collar, long black apron, and smooth red head, moved with a blinking serenity along unkempt beds bordered with broken cement; here culling some small creamy thing from a gnarled tree that declaimed with every brandished limb it could ill spare its one rosette; there choosing among little armies of red valerian which fought and beat the grass unaided under a barren rockery.

Thus began for Heans a day pregnant with curious events. It was Sir William Heans' fate in these eventful hours to ask a surprising number of questions, and to have them answered with a remarkable grossness.