The Serio-Comic Governess by Israel Zangwill

Accident -- the key to all great inventions -- supplied Eileen with a new way of educating her mistress. The cook had been impertinent, Mrs. Maper complained. "Why don't you hunt her? " Eileen replied. Mrs. Maper corrected the Irishism by saying, "Do you mean dismiss? " Eileen hastened to accuse herself of Irish imperfections, and henceforward begged to learn the correct phrases or pronunciations. Sometimes she ventured apologetically to wonder if the Irish way was not more approved of the dictionary. Then they would wander into the library in the apparently unoccupied wing, and consult dictionary after dictionary till Eileen hoped Mrs. Maper's brain had received an indelible impression.

One Sunday afternoon a friendly orthoepical difference of this nature arose even as Mrs. Maper sat in her palatial drawing room waiting for callers, and they repaired to the library, Mrs. Maper arguing the point with loud good humour. A glass door giving by corkscrew iron steps on the garden, banged hurriedly as they made their chattering entry. The rows of books -- that had gone with the Hall like the family portraits -- stretched silently away, but amid the smell of leather and learning, Eileen's lively nostrils detected the whiff of the weed, and sure enough on the top of a stepladder reposed a plain briar pipe beside an unclosed Greek folio.