Nell Gwynne's On Land and At Sea by Kage Baker, Kathleen Bartholomew Page A

Rendlesham to answer a letter from her correspondent, Mr. Darwin. (He had responded with some enthusiasm to her original description a few days previously.) Miss Rendlesham rather objecting to Mrs. Otley’s hollow-eyed visitor, she took her ubiquitous book and joined everyone else in the inner courtyard to watch Herbertina practice on the dandy horse.
    This provided considerable amusement for an hour or so, with Herbertina growing steadily more confident and daring on the machine. The Devere sisters were wild to try it themselves, and Dora lamented not bringing any of her schoolgirl costumes: but Lady Beatrice tactfully pointed out that they were hoping to avoid notice, which would be quite impossible if Dora were to proceed down Market Street or Babbacombe Road with her knees flashing free.
    “I suppose that means we may not try it in our bathing costumes on the beach, either,” sighed Maude. “I suppose it is best to keep it secret.”
    “In fact, we should probably go indoors with it now,” said Lady Beatrice. “Our fellow lodgers have missed this demonstration, but they will be coming back for lunch now, I think. Time to put away Herbertina’s fascinating toy.”
    “Especially as I suspect I’m meant to use this to go hunt sea caves full of submarine boats and floating cannons,” put in Herbertina. “I thought I would try that tonight, you know. The moon is full; there should be plenty of light.”
    “You should rest, then,” said Miss Rendlesham, closing her book and standing up. “And certainly change your clothes! Your trouser cuffs are destroyed, and you will surely want rougher clothes for tonight.”
    The drayman having departed with the box in which the dandy horse had come, they stashed it in the stables with their own trunks and covered it with a horse blanket. Miss Rendlesham carefully affixed the label from Mrs. Corvey’s own trunk to the blanketed lump, which they adjudged should render it invisible to any of the staff until it was time to depart for home.
    Mrs. Goodman had departed when they all trooped back upstairs, but she had left behind a box of further surprises for everyone else. Mrs. Corvey, in a rare expansive mood, passed out some odd-looking items: what were surely busks and corset stays, but made of a smooth black fibrous material.
    “And these are also from Mr. Felmouth,” she said, “for the rest of us. He must be sending us everything loose in the Fabrication Department! He writes to say he is not sure what use these may be, but he also advises that they are much lighter than ordinary stays and even stronger. An experimental effort at making artificial whalebone, I gather.”
    “Lighter stays are always a grand idea. And stronger ones, too; work does get rather vigorous at times…” said Miss Rendlesham. She rubbed a cautious finger along a busk, but the color remained fast. “What are they made of?”
    “He claims they are made from a fiber somehow spun from pitch, and reinforced with glue,” said Mrs. Corvey. “And as daft as that sounds, there’s more: he says that if these are used in place of ordinary stays, they should prove proof against both knives and small arms fire!”
    “Then they ought to be marvelous against badly aimed champagne corks, said Jane. “Which I do most sincerely hope will continue to be the worst thing we encounter.”
    “Well, I’ll try them out tonight,” said Herbertina gamely. “If they can stand up against the rigors of the dandy horse, they should be proof against playful MPs, don’t you think?”
    Lady Beatrice, having already fetched her second-best corset, looked up from where she was carefully unpicking a pertinent seam.
    “I imagine tonight may well tell,” she said gravely, and set her own corset aside. “To which end, Herbertina, do bring me one of your special corsets and I will make the changes for you before you go out this evening.”
    She looked at Mrs. Corvey, and added, “Along with his usual daily flowers, Mr.