Quaint Secondary Characters

Writing the third chapter of BEWITCHED yesterday, I was struck again by how much I like creating strange secondary characters. It seems I've got a special fondness for the absurd, and indeed one of the things I absolutely adore about researching Regency life is finding out about people's eccentricities.

So my hero got stuck with an ancient butler/valet with a terrible lisp:

"Thur?" Hobbes shuffled into the study-cum-library. The trusty valet, his cheeks hollow, his tufty hair carefully combed across his balding head, looked as if he had been born at the dawn of the last century. The breath rattled in his chest, giving the impression he was about to perish on the spot.

(The "thur" I took from Pratchett's Igors. I just couldn't resist; the tempation proved to be too much *g*)