It's such a very male room, in a mysteriously boisterous way that isn't at all like her tidy, quiet father and her tidy, quiet husband. It makes her itch to either redecorate and direct someone to clean it, or to sidle discreetly out of this space that she shouldn't be in. But she pushes that feeling away: she's perfectly welcome, it's her dear friend Mary's husband's room and Mary says it's all right, and it's just for a moment with the door locked.

It's actually several moments for her to figure out how to put on everything, and how the different sorts of stays ought to feel, with Mary providing laughing help, and she has to take down her topknot entirely and make a funny ugly sort of muddle out of it to get it to fit properly under the linen cloth. But it works! It all works well enough.

"There!" she says at the end, laughing too, and does a careful little twirl. "What do you think, my dear, do I look like a Scottish lady?"

Oh, this will be fun! It already is.